Home and away
by AbCarter
Summary: Jeff and Bogg have been separated. Jeff has been stuck in 18th century Ceylon without an omni. Bogg finally finds him after many years of searching. After only a few hours together Jeffrey's voyaging again. [In the process of a rewrite]
1. Ceylon

_A/N: This story is currently in the process of being severly rewritten. Some scenes will be changed, others deleted, still others added. About 45 percent will be new.  
_

-oOo-

_Ceylon, 1779_

Jeffrey stops a moment to wipe the sweat from his face. The basket is heavy on his back. His neck hurts and he wants to put down the basket, but he knows he will never get it up again, and he must continue. There is much more coffee he needs to pick. From a distance a man is shouting at him to get a move on. The man in the next row hisses at him that he shouldn't upset the master anymore. He's going to cause them all trouble. Master surely hasn't forgotten about last week. Neither has Jeffrey. His back hurted so much from the lashes that the first few nights he couldn't sleep. The first day he couldn't even work, he couldn't carry the basket on his back. Which resulted in more lashes, on his legs this time, to incourage him to pick it up anyway. Jeffrey is still planning revolt, though.

Not all the workers see themselves as slaves. Quite a few came to the plantation voluntary to work here. Jeffrey tries to convince them that that doesn't make it okay for the plantation owner to make them work from early morning till late in the evening, to feed them badly and offer them minimal sleeping arrangements. They answer that they were worse off before they came to the plantation, they would go hungry otherwise, they rather don't go hungry. Jeffrey doesn't understand their passiveness. He feels very much alone. He tries to move the basket on his back a little and continues picking the coffeeberries.

When his basket is full Jeffrey goes to the cart at the start of the row to empty it.

"You! Take this cart to the main building."

Why, Jeffrey wants to ask, but he knows better. He will not get much of an answer anyway. He leaves his basket behind and pulls the cart to the main building. There is a small line of men waiting there. Someone tells him to get in line. The plantation owner and another man are approaching them.

"My man servant just got sick, and I had to leave him behind," the man in the linen suit says to the plantation owner. He takes large steps; the planter has to make an effort to keep up. The planter isn't used to this, drops of sweat are already pearling on his forehead. The strang man doesn't seem to be bothered. "Terrible thing it was. He was very useful to me, but not when he's sick. They don't have our strong European constitutions they have. So now I need a new man servant, and I was wondering if you might have any for me." The man stops and turns to the planter.

"You want to buy a new slave?" The planter pants a little.

"I prefer the term man servant. That's what he'd be doing anyway, serving me."

"Well, with your permission, I have lined up a few men for you to look at."

"What about that one?" The man points at Jeffrey.

"You spotted well. He has European parentage, but he is a bit of trouble. Talks a lot about things he knows nothing about."

"As long as he doesn't get sick. I'll just give him so much to do, he doesn't have time to talk. How much do you want for him?"

"100."

"100? For a slave that's a bit of trouble? I'll give you eighty, and that's just because I'm in a hurry, and don't have a lot of time to hackle or take my business elsewhere." At that moment Jeffrey realizes who the man is. He faints.

"I'll take your eighty," the plantation owner says quickly. "Shall I tell a few of my men to carry him to your carriage?"

"No, I'll handle him myself." The man walks over to Jeffrey, hoists him over his shoulder and they both disappear, leaving the planter and his slaves in utter confusion.


	2. Waking up

Jeffrey opens his eyes slightly. He's lying on his back on something soft. It is light around him. He scans the room. In the corner someone is sitting in a chair. Where is he? Who is that person? What happened to him?

"Hey, you're awake." The person in the corner jumps up. From the sound of it, it's a girl. "I'll get Dad," the girl continues. In three paces she is out of the room.

Jeffrey moves so he sits up in the bed. A bed, an actual bed. He hasn't slept in an actual bed since he doesn't know when. The room is small, but nice. Any room would be nice to him. There's the bed, the chair the girl was sitting in, a wardrobe, and a few pictures of flowers and rocks on the wall. He certainly isn't in 1779 anymore. How did he get here? He tries to remember. He barely can. He was working on the plantation, and then Bogg showed up. He looked much older. He doesn't remember the rest of it. It felt like a dream. But now he's sitting in this bed. Perhaps it wasn't a dream.

The door opens. A man enters.

"Bogg!"

"Jeffrey." The man rushes over to him, and gives him a hug. "I'm so sorry I didn't come to get you sooner, but I couldn't find you." Bogg holds Jeffrey at arms length for a moment, then pulls him into another hug. "But I never gave up. I'm glad we finally found you. I'm sorry we couldn't get to you five years earlier."

Had it been five years? He had lost track of time. Jeffrey tries to free himself from Bogg's hug and take a good look at him.

"I've missed you so much." Bogg puts his arms around him again, and holds him as though this is the way he is going to prevent them from ever being separated again.

"I've missed you too." He gets out of the embrace. "You have aged a lot in five years."

"Well, actually, for me a lot more than five years have passed." Bogg smiles a little uncomfortable. "But I never gave up looking for you."

"Who's that?" Jeffrey points to the girl that stands beside the bed, smiling.

"This," Bogg takes the girl by the hand, "this is the wonderful Kate. She helped me look for you these past few years. She's my daughter."

"Hello, Jeffrey. Dad told me so much about you I feel like I've know you for years."

Jeffrey shakes the hand she extends. "I didn't know you had a daughter."

"I had her after I lost you."

"But you just said that was five years ago. But she's not five, she's more like fifteen."

"Eighteen, actually," Kate says.

"Eighteen. No one grows to be eighteen in five years."

"I said it was longer than five years for me. It's been twenty-one years since I last saw you."

"Twenty-one!' Jeffrey falls back into the pillows.

"I didn't even know where to begin looking for you. We were separated on the voyage, so you could be anywhere, any time. I don't know how that happened." Bogg tries to explain.

Jeffrey looks at him through his eye lashes; He remembers again how he felt when he first realized he had lost both Bogg and the omni. He tries to shake of the memory. No more thinking of that. He's got Bogg back now.

"They say there was something wrong with my omni. In the first years I voyaged from time to time from place to place trying to find you. Kate's mom helped me back then. That wasn't very productive."

Jeffrey looks from one to the other. Slowly it starts to sink in that this is Bogg. Bogg has finally found him. After all these years. Bogg is really happy about it too; he can't stop smiling. Maybe he should try a smile as well.

Even though his main emotion is still utter confusion Jeffrey manages a smile. Bogg grabs him in another bear hug.

"I'm so glad I got you back, kid."

"Don't call me, kid," Jeffrey says in a reflex. It surprises him.

"Sorry about that. I know how much you hated being called kid."

"It's okay. It -- it means it really is you." And as though for the first time that morning he realizes it is Bogg in corporeal form sitting on his bed he touches him. It really is Bogg. His shoulders, his arms, his bear hug.

"How did you find me?" His voice sounds muffled. Bogg's embrace is nearly choking him.

Bogg lets go, and checks if he hasn't done any damage to him. "We started going through all those data things we have in the library. We thought that there may be some record of you, that you are some place and time. And that's how we found you, looking through all the records trying to find your name, or a description of you."

"But then, why didn't you come five years earlier?"

Bogg gives an appologetic smile. "This is the first time you showed up in any records. We tried to go back further, but we couldn't find you. I'm sorry. You must have lead a horrible life."

"I did." Jeffrey looks down. "I don't want to talk about it."

"That's all right. Would you like something to eat? Or sit outside?"

"Yeah. Both I think."

"There are some clothes in the wardrobe. I hope something fits." Bogg gets up from the bed. "I'll see you downstairs then, in a while."

Bogg holds the door open for Kate. She gives Jeffrey a wave of her hand as she walks out. Jeffrey retuns a little wave. After Bogg has closed the door behind him Jeffrey sighs and gets out of bed. He walks over to the window and looks into the garden. A beautiful Spring day.

Jeffrey's still not sure whether it's a dream or not. At least it's a pleasant dream. He decides to enjoy it to its fullest. He doesn't have many dreams, and most of them aren't pleasant. He opens the wardrobe to pick out some clothes to wear.

-oOo-

When Jeffrey gets down the downstairs living room is empty. Through the window he sees Bogg sitting outside.

"Hi." Jeffrey steps out on to the patio.

"Hi." Bogg beams another smile at him. "Have a seat. We didn't know what you'd like to eat, so we just put out everything. And if you rather have a cooked meal, just say so, I can make you something."

"No, this is fine." Jeffrey sits down, and takes a sip from the orange juice. "Ooh."

"Not good?"

"No, it's good. I just haven't had much fresh food in ages. It usually was just some stale bread and dried meat."

"Well, we're going to try to make up for all that here. So tuck in."

Jeffrey loads his plate with stir fried egg and toast. Bogg and Kate watch him eat. Jeffrey finds this a little embarrassing, but he's too hungry to make them stop. Bogg keeps pushing more food at him. Jeffrey tries a little of everything. It's been a long time since he's had any food that was worth eating. When he truly thinks he can't eat another bite Jeffrey puts his fork down on his plate.

"That was delicious," he says.

"Good to hear," Bogg replies.

"Best meal I've had in years."

"You must be enjoying yourself; you're already making jokes."

"I guess I like it here. Where is here anyway?"

"Here is Voyager Island," Bogg replies. "You've been her before."

Jeffrey nods. He remembers. "But you didn't live here then, did you?"

"No, I got the cottage here after I quit voyaging."

"You quit Voyagers?!"

"Not entirely. Just the field work. I figured it had become too dangerous, what with you gone missing and all. Then Kate was born." Bogg beams a smile at her.

"Why didn't you settle down somewhere in time?"

"I still had to find you. I would never give up looking for you, Jeff." Bogg extends a hand and squeezes his shoulder. "I have to go now, tell the Council I have found you. We'll talk some after that, all right?" Bogg gets up.

"Should I come too?"

"No, you can stay here. It won't take any time. I'll be right back." Bogg tousles Jeffrey's hair "I like the hair cut. I'm so glad I finally got you back."

"Me too."

Bogg leaves the garden in his long stride leaving Jeffrey and Kate behind. They sit quietly for a while. Jeffrey tries to think of something to say. It's been a long time since he had to use chit-chat. It's also been a long time since he could talk to someone in English. He would talk to himself from time to time, just so he wouldn't forget how to. He tried to teach some English to the others on the plantation, but they weren't really interested. The planter used him a couple of times as an interpreter when doing business. He had tried to use that position to talk to people about being enslaved on the plantation. They just laughed at him, and after that he had given up, usually tried to make himself scares when the planter had business with English speaking folks.

"So, your mom is a Voyager?" he finally asks.

"Mom used to be a Voyager."

"Anyone I know?" Stupid question. He only knows two female Voyagers: Susan and Olivia. The girl looks a bit like Olivia, but it's been six, almost seven years since he's seen her. The picture of her in his head isn't very clear anymore. Half the blond girls in the world would look like Olivia.

"I don't know who you know."

Funny, Jeffrey thinks to himself. "Are there many female Voyagers?"

"A few."

Obviously this conversation isn't going anywhere. Jeffrey wants to stick out his tongue at her. He sits back and crosses his arms. He hopes Bogg is coming back soon. That's the person he really wants to talk to. They've been apart for so long. Five years. Twenty-one for Bogg. He wants to know what he's been up to during that time. Why did it take him so long to find him? Well, obviously he had a kid of his own. That probably got in the way. Bogg had a family of his own. He didn't need his orphan companion anymore.

Jeffrey tries to push those thoughts away. Bogg would have never thought a thing like that. Just like he would have never given up on Bogg if things had been reversed. He has tried looking for Bogg; he has tried to escape from the plantation. But they came after him, shot at him. He's lucky to still have both his legs.

"Did it really take twenty-one years to find me? What did Bogg do in that time?"

"Look for you."

"For twenty-one years? Why did it take so long?"

"He didn't have a clue as to where or when to start looking for you."

"He must have had some idea. When we got separated, he could have thought maybe I was left behind, or that I had landed where he did only a little further away."

"Dad looked into all of that."

Jeffrey racks his brain trying to think of the things he would have done to try and find Bogg.

"Don't you have some kind of Voyager tracking device, that you know who's voyaging and where they go to?"

"There is an omni tracker, the Omnitron." Kate shakes her head. "It shows where and when omni's are. It doesn't show where individuals are who have voyaged. Or where they are going during the voyage. If Dad had lost grip of his omni, he could have ended up anywhere himself."

Jeffrey gets up and starts pacing up and down the patio. Kate continues talking to him. Sure, now she wants to talk to him, when she's telling him things he doesn't want to hear.

"Omni's are not supposed to do that. Once the voyage starts, anyone who's on it, should also reach the end of it. Dad's omni was faulty, but they could never find what was wrong with it. They just advised him not to travel in pairs anymore."

Jeffrey snorts. That was of course helpful. Shees, they only figured out there was something wrong with the omni after he got lost in time? What about when Bogg first dropped into his bedroom? Or how the omni kept dropping them into times they didn't want to be going because they were on their way fixing other problems?

"Why leave me there for five years?"

Kate gets up. She's about as tall as he is. Not surprising seen as her dad is pretty tall.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Dad did try. Very much. He blames himself for losing you."

"Wasn't there a way to get to me sooner?"

"That was the first time we found any records of you. They didn't always keep good records in those days, or at least they didn't make good back ups of them. I can show you if you want to see."

Jeffrey thinks about this. Yeah, he really wants to know why it took so long to find him. He nods.

"Show me."

"Come with me."

-oOo-

Jeffrey follows Kate to a building he remembers seeing before, Voyager Head Quarters. Bogg was on trial here, set up by one of his old class mates. They walk round the building until Kate stops at a window. With a pocket knife she jimmies the lock of the window and pushes it open.

"After you," she says.

Jeffrey climbs through the window. He looks around while Kate climbs in after him and closes the window. It's dark, but he can make out a number of wooden desks and chairs. It looks like a class room. He takes a few steps and stumbles over a chair.

"Quietly. We're not supposed to be here."

"No kidding." Jeffrey scrambles back up.

They hear a sound outside the room.

"Hide here." Kate pushes Jeffrey underneath a desk and dives in beside him. They wait. Jeffrey feels his heart pounding in his throat. The door to the class room opens.

"Kate? I know you're in here. You might as well show yourself."

"How did you know it was me?" Kate jumps up. "You hadn't even seen me."

"No one likes to be in school as much as you do. Particularly after hours." The man switches the light on. "Who is that with you?"

"That, Alexander, is the famous Jeffrey Jones," Kate says.

Jeffrey comes out from underneath the desk and stands up beside her.

"Jeffrey Jones. It is my honor to meet you." Alexander extends his hand to Jeffrey. He shakes it. "May I welcome you, on behalf of all Voyagers, to Voyager Island. We heard much of your good works, and are very pleased to finally have you in our mids again."

"We forgot to say that."

"What did you forget?" Alexander asks Kate.

"Welcome back on behalf of everyone. Totally slipped my mind. Of course all Voyagers are happy you are here. Over the years everyone has contributed some time to help find you," Kate says to Jeffrey.

"But none as much as your dad," Alexander adds.

"Right. And that's what I'm here to show Jeffrey. How hard my dad worked to find him. If that's all right?" she asks in a quieter voice.

"Of course. Anything for Jeffrey Jones now that he is back with us. You know, you could have used the front door this time."

"It hadn't occurred to me."

"I'm sure it didn't. Well, you know where to be. I'll see how much damage you did to this window."

"Come." Kate takes Jeffrey by the hand and they leave the class room.

"What is this building?" Jeffrey looks around. The hall is high and wide, with wood paneling, a few doors and little alcoves. Historic maps and pencil drawings in frames line the walls at regular distances.

"Voyager school. This is where young Voyagers get there education. You know history and things. Dad's a teacher here."

"Bogg teaches history?" Jeffrey's mouth falls open with surprise, making it difficult to articulate the question.

Kate laughs. "No. Dad teaches basic survival skills. He's quite good at those. Well, you'd have to be if you have such a bad grasp of history as he does."

"I thought this was the courthouse."

"Courthouse?" Kate gives him a puzzled look.

Jeffrey explains how he knew the building.

"Oh, I see. We don't really have a courthouse. But the school is also used to confront Voyagers who are not doing a good job, give them the proverbial slap on the wrist. Apparently, such a thing is educational."

Jeffrey suddenly stops.

"What's the matter? Oh."

He's looking at a picture of himself. Voyager Missing in Action, it says above the picture.

"Dad had that put up there. It seems only right. You are a Voyager after all."

Jeffrey notices Kate glances to the right, to a picture under the words In Loving Memory.

"How long has this been up here?"

"Always, as far as I know. Well, maybe not that long. You are one of us, Jeffrey, and Dad made sure no one would forget. Come, that wasn't what I wanted to show you."

Jeffrey takes a last look at his picture, and the short biography next to it. Then he follows Kate down the hall. They go up a few flights of stairs. Turn to the right and enter into the room at the end of the corridor. They're in the courtroom.

"Have a seat."

Jeffrey sits down and looks around the room. It hasn't changed a bit since he was here for the trial of Phineas Bogg. That must have been twenty-two years ago. Jeffrey has to laugh. He is now nineteen so even on Voyager Island he was present at an event that took place before he was born. Voyager Island exists out of Earth time, and it is technically not possible to travel in time on the Island, or so they've told him. Jeffrey realizes that's not true. He is here twenty-two years after he first was here, but in his life that's only six years ago. It feels like he's gotten one back over the Council. It feels good.

"So this is the courtroom."

"You could call it that." Kate reaches underneath a cupboard, takes a key from the bottom of it and uses that to open the cupboard door. She takes an omni from the cupboard.

"Recognize this?"

"That's an omni."

"More particular. This is Dad's old omni. He still used it the first few years when he was looking for you. It's in here now he doesn't use it anymore." Kate puts the omni in the projector.

"He got a new omni?"

"Sort of. He doesn't voyage much anymore. He uses the omni that used to belong to my mom. It is more reliable." Kate pushes a few buttons and a picture appears. "That's my mom."

"So it is Olivia. I already thought you looked like her when I first saw you."

"I don't look like her that much. My mouth is all different." Kate makes faces with a twisted mouth.

"You have her eyes. And the same hair."

"That I do." Kate looks at the frozen image of her mom and smiles. "Are there any other memories you'd like to see?" Jeffrey looks puzzled. "You know what I mean. The omni has kept a record of everywhen it has been. Would you like to see any of those places and times again?"

"You said you wanted to show me how much time Bogg has spent looking for me, I guess I'd like to see that."

"Are you sure? It's quite depressing."

Jeffrey nods he's sure.

"All right, that can be done." Kate pushes the buttons and as the projection starts she sits down next to Jeffrey.

On the screen a younger Bogg appears searching for Jeffrey. Jeffrey feels a pang when he hears Bogg call his name. He sees how Bogg is looking for him, but can't find him. He goes back to the previous time they were and is also unsuccessful there. After a while Bogg is brought to VHQ because the Omnitron has detected a little irregularity in one of his voyages.

"A little irregularity? A bug in your system, you say. That bug must be the size of an elephant. I just lost Jeffrey; that's not a little irregularity." Bogg is shouting.

Jeffrey recognizes the other three from his previous visit. They put the omni in the Omnitron to see what information it has stored. Perhaps Bogg has on landing accidentally pressed the activating button again, thus making him voyage to another time while leaving Jeffrey behind. The information stored in the memory of the omni can't rule out this has happened.

"The omni keeps a record of everything," Susan explains, "but it only collects data from landing until leaving. There are no flight records."

"In other words Jeffrey could be anywhere."

"I'm sorry, but yes."

"I have to find him. The kid doesn't deserve this. First I take him away from his family and his home, and then I loose him in time."

"You can't find him, Phineas. Where will you start looking?"

"I don't know. But I will find him."

Kate has seen the recordings before. Her mind wanders to a few days earlier.

-oOo-

"I've found him," Kate says in a soft voice.

"You have?" Bogg leaps up.

Kate gives him a sheet of paper. "He's on the inventory list of a coffee plantation." She points at the name.

"Are you sure? Where is this plantation? We must go get him."

"You must know this is not the Jeffrey you last saw ... he's older. He's nineteen."

"How do you know that? There is no age here."

"I found some other things." Kate puts a book in Bogg's hands. He opens it to a page she marked. He reads out the highlighted sentence.

"'For my twentieth birthday I received twenty lashes'. What is this?" He lowers the book.

"That's a book written by Jeffrey." Kate shows him the title page. "It's quite interesting. It relates about the voyages with you, that that suddenly ended, how he was a slave at a coffee plantation, how he escaped, etcetera. It's nice to finally get his perspective on the adventures you two had."

Bogg gives her a wry smile. "It says here it was his twentieth birthday. How do you make it he was nineteen?"

"I found a list of punishments handed out on the plantation in April 1780. He's on there. More than once." Kate gives him the list.

Bogg glances it. "Poor kid."

"The inventory list is the oldest record I could find of Jeffrey. It's six months older than the punishment list. But a few months before it there was a fire at the plantation and all older records were lost. It could be he's been there for years. It could also be he just arrived the previous day. Jeffrey's book isn't helpful there either, he makes no mention of when he came to the plantation, or where he'd been before that. No mention I can use to track him. I'm sorry, Dad, but Jeffrey lost five years is the best I can do."

Bogg sinks back into his seat. He shakes his head. "Poor kid."

Kate is silent. She doesn't know what to say.

"Give me the book." Bogg says to her. "May be you've missed something."

"I hope so," Kate says as she gives him the book. She leaves the room to let him read on his own.

-oOo-

Kate gets up to turn of the projector. Jeffrey wipes the tears from his eyes.

"It's okay to cry. I would cry if I'd been through everything you've been through."

"Yes, but you're a girl."

Kate squints her eyes lightly. "I'm letting that one go. Dad cried when he learned what you had been through, or would go through."

"What do you mean? Would go through?"

"I shouldn't have said that." Kate bites her lip.

"You've said it. Can't take it back. You might as well explain."

"I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you this."

Jeffrey glares at her. He has always hated it when people kept secrets from him. "Tell me anyway. If it has anything to do with me being missing in time I have a right to know."

"I guess." Kate stares at her feet for a moment. Just as Jeffrey thinks he needs to persuade her a little more, she starts to talk. "We found a book. I found it. It was written by you. It looked like your autobiography. I guess other readers would have though it was an early Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. At least the parts where you tell about your voyages. You also tell about how you were imprisoned, and later enslaved, and how you got out and wrote the book when you were old, or, rather, the one you would have written if Dad hadn't come and gotten you."

"But ..." Jeffrey rubs his forehead and tries to come to grips with what he has jusst heard. "If you know everything about me through the book, then how come he didn't come and collect me earlier?"

Kate is silent, she turns her eyes back to her feet.

"Why not?"

"I should not have told you about the book."

"Tell me," Jeffrey demands. "Tell me." He grabs Kate by the wrist and makes her look at him. She has tears in her eyes.

"You're hurting me."

He twists a little harder. "Tell me."

"You didn't know where you were imprisoned; you didn't tell us in the book." Kate says. Jeffrey lets go of her arm.

"It's my fault you didn't find me sooner. I didn't tell you in the book." He stumbles back. "I know where I was. Why didn't I write it in the book? It's my own fault that I was a slave for all those years." Jeffrey's eyes start to water up again.

"No, no. You mustn't think like that." Kate stretches her arms out to him. "Even if you had written it in the book we couldn't have used that information. I've looked for you. I've looked for you in all the data records we have of that period in Ceylon. I couldn't find you anywhere. If only I hadn't limited my search to Ceylon, if I had taken the whole of Asia, I'm sure I would have found you elsewhere." Tears are rolling from her eyes. "If we'd had tried harder we would have found you younger. It's our fault you've been there for such a long time, not yours. Your book has helped us. That way we knew it was really you."

-oOo-

"The first few years," Jeffrey starts. Kate and he are sitting on the tables in the courtroom opposite of each other. "The first few years, I was sure Bogg was coming to get me out sooner or later. We've been separated before, and one always came to get the other. But as it took longer and longer for him to come, I started wondering what was taking him. Had he forgotten me? Had he died? And as a result, would I die in this prison? Then I started thinking that he must have lost the omni too, so he was somewhere else entirely and couldn't leave there either. I took some sort of comfort that we were both lost in time. It felt like I wasn't alone, even though I was. And I could tell myself that I wasn't still there because Bogg had forgotten about me."

"Dad has never forgotten about you."

"When I first came here, and heard he had an eighteen year old daughter, that's exactly what I thought. He may have looked for me for a few years, but then he had a daughter, a real family of his own, and I just slipped his mind. He had someone else to think of."

"It wasn't like that. He never stopped thinking of you." Kate shakes her head. "At night, when he tucked me in, when I was little, he would tell me a bed time story, and it would always be a story about you. I used to love those stories. He never stopped looking for you. When I found your book last month, he was thorn between getting in immediately and searching a bit more to find you younger. The way you are now is the closest to the separation we could find you."

"Unless I tell you when I first arrived, then Bogg can get in and get me there." Jeffrey jumps up. "I don't know the exact date, but I landed in Ceylon in the first week of March in 1775, near the town of ..."

"That wouldn't work," Kate interrupts him. "The you that you are now would disappear, never have existed actually. So you wouldn't be able to tell me where the fourteen year old you is. You can't change your own history."

"Oh." Jeffrey sinks back down on the table feeling defeated. He had never thought about it, but it makes sense in a way, that you can't change your own history.

Kate gets up to take the omni from the projector.

"So that's Bogg's old omni. Does it still work?"

"Barely."

"Can I see?"

"Sure." Kate gives him the omni.

"I have so many happy memories through this thing. In a way they are what kept me going." Kate squeezes his shoulder. "But at times I thought it was all just a dream. That we would hold on to each other, click the button, ... "


	3. Tampering with time

"And we dropped in somewhere new." Jeffrey looks around. "What happened? Where are we?"

"You had to click the button, didn't you?" Kate says. She takes the omni from him. "We just voyaged."

"Voyaged? We used to drop out of the sky after a voyage."

"I know. They fixed that when this thing was in for maintenance. Caused too many sprained ankles, and the occasional broken leg. Not just in Voyagers. Once a Voyager broke the leg of the unfortunate person he fell on top of. Nowadays Voyagers appear, much in the way they disappear."

"And where are we now?" There is something familiar about the street they're in. As if he has seen it before.

"USA somewhere, Texas, I think." She smiles sheepishly. "I kind of neglected my omni read out homework this week, month, year."

"I see, so it's like father, like daughter?"

"I resent that. I was always very good at doing my homework before I took an interest in you." She uses her index finger for emphasis.

Jeffrey chuckles. "Bogg didn't pay attention in school because of a girl, and you didn't pay attention because of a boy. Like father, like daughter." He finds this very amusing.

Kate looks at him with a blank face. "I have a good mind to just leave you here."

Jeffrey has to laugh at that too. "I think Bogg has also used that threat on me."

"He should have followed through on it."

"Oh, come on. I was just teasing you. Try again." He straightens his face and tries to look at her seriously. "Where are we, and when is this?"

Kate takes a deep breath. "November 1963. Texas, I don't know, Austin? I can't make that out. Green light. We might as well stay here a bit and find out what the crowd is about." Kate closes the omni and hangs it on her belt.

"November 1963? The 22nd of November? Then this is not Austin, this is Dallas." He suddenly remembers why it seems familiar.

Kate opens the omni again. "Now I know where Dallas is. Hang on, the light just turned red." Kate looks up and sees Jeffrey running away. "Hey, wait up." She calls after him. She hangs the omni back on her belt and starts running after him.

A little later Kate catches up with Jeffrey as he is running up the fire-escape of a warehouse. She grabs him by the legs and pulls him down. Jeffrey falls, tries to kick Kate off him and crawl back up the stairs.

"We have to save him. We can save him. We must stop him."

"No, we don't." Kate pulls him down again and pins him to the stairs. "There was a green light; this is what is supposed to happen." Jeffrey doesn't give up that easily. He tries to struggle away, but Kate is a strong girl and she has the upper advantage.

"You don't know if this is the right thing. He could do so many more good things if he stays alive."

"Yes, perhaps, but he is not supposed to do them." They hear gun shots.

"And now he won't be doing them." Jeffrey stops struggling.

"I'm sorry." Kate lets go of Jeffrey. "But we can't save them all." He slides down the stairs.

"I think there are very few we can save."

"That's not true. You know yourself that Voyagers can help save lots of lives. Just occasionally we have to let one go."

"I need to be alone right now." Jeffrey runs away again.

"Well, at least this time we know _when_ you are." Kate sits down and checks the omni. The light is green.

-oOo-

A few hours later Kate finds Jeffrey in a park. She sits down besides him straddling the seat of the bench.

"How are you?"

"Fine. I think. This thing, I don't understand it." He points at the omni. "It gives a green light and we're supposed to let a man die. It gives a red light and we're supposed to get that man killed. I can't believe I liked being a Voyager."

"It's not always like that. It has it good moments. You were there, along side Edison in his lab working on the light bulb. Or when Pasteur discovered rabies vaccine. Although perhaps, for you, that is not a good example." Kate pulls her hair and rubs her hands in her face trying to think of a better example than one where Jeffrey himself nearly died because he was bitten by a rabid dog. "Or in the American Civil War when you helped uncover a confederate spy. You helped save many lives when you were there."

"I was on board the Titanic when it sank. I tried to warn about what was going to happen. No one listened to me, because I was just a kid."

"It wasn't meant to happen. We can't save them all."

"What would have been wrong with saving president Kennedy?"

"He would have lived."

Jeffrey gives her a scowl.

"I don't mean it that cruel. Because he lives on, that influences other things. The bad things, but also the good things. They can't happen anymore either. The sinking of the Titanic, though horrible for the people on board, did a lot for nautical safety regulations, so in a way, that ship sinking saved a lot of other lives."

"There must have been other ways. We could have tried to save them all."

"We can't save them all. We must let go of some."

"You said that already. Why can't we save them all?" Jeffrey wants to get up. He wants to get away from this person. Why can't she leave him alone? The plantation was so bad he had started to idealize voyaging. He had forgotten about the bad things they had to do, or let happen. He was wrong, voyaging wasn't a happy time in his life. The happy times had ended before that.

"I don't know. Too much work I guess. If Voyagers prevent bad things from happening, then how are people going to learn from their mistakes? We mustn't want to save them all. We have to accept that some must die."

Jeffrey snorts. He remembers a somewhat similar speech from Bogg on board the Titanic. He had wanted to warn the captain about the ice-berg. Bogg had sat him down to tell him that they couldn't do that because the Titanic was supposed to sink. It was a short speech because at the same time Bogg was eyeing a girl. When he went after the girl, Jeffrey tried to get on the bridge.

Despite his anger Jeffrey has to smile. Bogg was always flirting with one girl or another. His eye for the ladies had gotten them in trouble more than once. It's hard imagining him being married to one and the same person. And that person Olivia, of all people. They were arguing most of the time, as far as he remembers. Maybe their marriage only lasted a couple of years. Still, it would be nice to see Olivia again.

"When I was thirteen Mom died," Kate interrupts his thoughts.

Jeffrey wants to scowl at Kate again. He's annoyed with her for only springing bad news on him. He holds back this time because he is also sorry for her she lost her mom.

"I couldn't accept that she had died," Kate continues. "She was a Voyager. She died on a Voyager mission. Voyagers travel through time. Surely, someone could go back in time and save her life. Go back just before the accident and pick her out of time. You know, how Voyagers are recruited."

"I know how Voyagers are recruited," Jeffrey snaps at her a little harder than intended.

"Yeah, well, there's another way," Kate snaps back. "I'm the first person to receive Voyager training that was born on the Island."

"You were born to be a Voyager." Jeffrey doesn't even try to hide the sarcasm in his voice. "Why are you telling me this? Is there a point to this story? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you because you lost your mom? Forget it. I lost my mom, and my dad, when I was twelve. I've also spent five years in slavery. It will be a long time before I start feeling sorry for you."

"Forget it then. I wanted to tell you that I understand how you feel about not being able to save them all. But if you don't want to hear, forget I even mentioned it." Kate takes the omni from her belt and sets the dials. "Let's go home." She puts a hand on Jeffrey's arm. He shrugs it off, but she grabs hold of his wrist and presses the trigger button. Nothing happens. Kate presses it again, and again.

"Bat's breath." She resets the dials.

"Something wrong?" Jeffrey asks.

Kate throws him a frantic look. "Home button doesn't work."

"We're stuck here?" Great. After being stuck in the 18th century for five years he is now stuck in the 20th. Well, at least it is closer to home.

"I don't think so. We voyaged here, so I think we can voyage away from here. We just can't get back to the Island."

"Oh, in stead of going back to your dad, let's go back to mine. New York 1982."

"Can't. The time boundary of this thing is still set at 1970."

"What?" Jeffrey asks mockingly. "You mean to say they haven't changed the time boundary when this thing was in for maintenance?"

"No, they haven't. But I can." Kate jumps up. "Follow me."

Jeffrey has to think about this for a moment. Following Kate got them in trouble in the first place. On the other hand, where else can he go? He sighs and gets up.

"Lead the way."

-oOo-

"Breaking in comes second nature to you, doesn't it?" Jeffrey says while Kate tries to pry open a window.

"You're the one that wants to go to the 1980's. I need some tools to make that happen. This is a place where they have such tools." Kate pushes the window open and dives in. "Are you coming?" She asks when her head pops up. Jeffrey climbs in after her and closes the window.

"Where are we anyway?"

"Technical lab. I need some precision tools."

Following Kate had not been easy. Her walk was almost a run. Probably picked up as a kid trying to keep up with her dad. First stop had been a phone boot where Kate had apparently looked up an address. Then they walk-ran for an hour to get to what seemed the other side of town. Jeffrey suggested taking a cab. Kate replied she thought those things cost money. She added she didn't have any. Neither had he so he gave up on the cab idea. He asked if she could omni them in any closer. She said the omni wasn't that precise.

Kate asked directions a couple of times. One time someone offered them a lift to a couple of streets from where they were going. Before Jeffrey could say anything about the dangers of hitchhiking Kate had jumped into the car. Jeffrey had quickly followed.

Half an hour later they are walking through a building they shouldn't be. He used to do this kind of thing all the time with Bogg. But Bogg was twice as big and three times as wide. When things got rough he could always hide behind him. He doesn't think Kate would proof to be quite as useful as a shield.

They proceed down the halls. Kate reads the signs by the doors, occasionally tries to open one. All are locked. She tries to open one with her pocket knife. When it doesn't give, she breaks the window and opens the door that way. "You stay on look out. I don't expect anyone will be bothered about what happens here today, country in morning and all, but still."

"What are you going to do?" Jeffrey looks into the lab.

"Work on the omni." Kate puts the omni on the work-bench and starts looking around for tools. She brings them to her location: a number of small screwdrivers and a soldering iron. She sits down and screws open the omni to take it apart.

"What are you doing? If you break it we can't get out of here anymore."

"Unless I turn of the homing signal, they will be able to find us. I know what I'm doing. I think."

"That's reassuring. Are you sure you did your take your omni apart homework?"

"Taking your omni apart for other purposes than cleaning is against the rules, so, yes. Just you look down the hall and see if anyone's coming and let me work in peace." Kate waves him out of the room.

Jeffrey decides to leave her on her own and walk around. He finds out they're in a Texas Instruments building. 'Basic survival skills,' he thinks. Bogg used to make the most of a situation by charming people. He didn't know much about technology. Jeffrey has missed him. Five years. Twenty-one year for Bogg. Will he have missed him as much? Must have, he kept looking for him for twenty-one years.

Jeffrey sits down on a bench in the hall way. There's so much he wanted to say to Bogg. He's never given up waiting for Bogg. He always knew they would see each other again one day. Some times the waiting got too hard, but it was also the thing that always gave him hope. He would lie on this floor mat at nights when he couldn't sleep and thought of the things he would say to Bogg. Now he had seen Bogg, briefly, he hadn't had the chance to say any of those things to him.

He leans his head against the wall. On the opposite wall hang some posters with information about the company. He has missed Bogg those five years. Almost as much as he has missed his folks. If his folks were still alive, none of what had happened after their death would have happened. He wouldn't have met Bogg; he wouldn't have voyaged; he wouldn't have gotten lost in time; Bogg wouldn't have found him, and he wouldn't have gotten lost in time again. Well, this time it won't take five years to be found. He will make sure of that. He now knows what to do: get himself in a newspaper that gets read by Voyagers. Or do something that will upset history so that a Voyager will come to set things straight. He wanted to do that in Ceylon; he just didn't know enough about 18th century Ceylon history. 20th century American history, however, piece of cake.

His thoughts return to his parents. It's been seven years since he's seen them. He misses them too, but for some reason he has less active memories of his folks than he has of Bogg. It is like the memories he has of them are fading away. First they're turning into black and white movies, then into silent movies. Jeffrey's afraid that before long he will have nothing left of his parents than a few snapshots in his memory. He tries to reactivate his memories. He hates to think he is losing his parents this way too.

Jeffrey looks at the pictures of the three founders of Texas Instruments.

"I'm not forgetting about my parents, am I?" he asks the first president of the company. "I love my folks, and I wish I could be with them again."

The president doesn't respond.

Jeffrey gets up and goes back to Kate, to find out what it is she is doing.

"I think we're alone here," Jeffrey says when he enters the room. "I didn't even see a guard."

"Good." Kate rests her chin on the tips of her fingers and stares at the pieces that came out of the omni.

"Looks like a puzzle." He is trying to hide that it really freaks him out to see a disassembled omni like that. It did when Edison took it apart, it does now when someone trained as a Voyager takes it apart.

"It is. It's a bit more difficult than I thought it would be."

"What did you want to do?" Jeffrey leans on the work-bench. His legs are starting to wobble a bit. Okay, he tells himself, 1963 not as bad a time to be stuck in as 1779. They're in America, he speaks the language, he'd be free to choose his own profession. He could live here, get a job, become a history teacher or something. He has a few ideas of how to get Bogg's attention, but if those don't work, or if they have to wait a while before him to get them unstuck, now is a much better time than before. Still, it would have been better if Kate hadn't opened the omni.

"This is Dad's old omni. It's not supposed to go beyond 1970. It already did that once, you know that, when Dad picked you up. I'm trying to figure out how I need to configure the wiring to get that more permanently. That's why Dad was never able to bring you back when he first picked you up, his omni couldn't go to 1982."

"Yeah, he explained to me."

"What he should have done," Kate takes the soldering iron and a pair of tweezers, "was take you to Voyager Island and let them take you home. I don't now if that ever occurred to him."

Jeffrey shrugs. "I don't know either. He never said."

"Maybe he tried and it didn't work. And he didn't want to tell you because he didn't want to get your hopes up or anything."

"I guess."

"Home setting is beyond repair. Best I can make of it is that someone deliberately made it impossible for Dad to get back to the Island."

Jeffrey looks at Kate. He can tell from the look in her eyes he doesn't have to mention a name. She's thinking of the same. Kate shakes her head.

"Doubtful. From what I've heard it's not his style. He likes to manipulate people rather than machinery."

"Did they ever catch him?"

"No, but they also haven't heard from him since before I was born. I guess he accidentally omnied himself into some quicksand and then couldn't get out."

A fitting end, Jeffrey thinks. Then reproaches himself for that thought. That was not how he was raised. He's going from bad to worse. First he forgets the things they did together and now he's forgetting the stuff his folks taught him too.

"Anyway, whatever is wrong with the home setting, I can't fix it without schematics."

"I thought you said it was fixed. You know, so Voyagers wouldn't drop from the sky anymore."

"Yeah. I guess that was less far taking maintenance than I thought it was. They just put in a new chip. Not done anything about all the other mals. They shouldn't have put in a new chip. They should have deactivated it entirely. An omni without a functioning home button should be melted down."

"So, how did it work later on, when Bogg was looking for me and you were a little kid? He did occasionally want to come back and see you, right? How did he do that? Or did he stop looking for me?"

"He was given another omni. And there's the Omnitron at the Island. You can call an omni to come home to the Island on its next voyage. I guess that's how it worked for him. He's got Mom's omni these days. I don't know why. I wouldn't want it." Kate bends down over her handy work and starts putting the omni back together. "I was able to reset the time boundary. Let's just hope that someone on the Island starts missing us and would like to see us again, figures we took off with Dad's old omni, Alexander might be giving that information, and sets the Omnitron for us. Otherwise, we could be voyaging for quite a while." She closes it up and sets the time and place. "Are you ready?"

"Shouldn't you clean up here first?" Jeffrey needs a little more time to recompose himself. All the scenario's that have been running through his head of what could go wrong have left him slightly agitated.

"Well, I also broke the glass, I won't be able to fix that." Kate shrugs. "Might as well leave the rest. Ready?"

Jeffrey grabs firmly on to her arm. He's not taking any chances on being left in time again. "Ready."

-oOo-

"So this is New York? The hustle and bustle of the big city." Kate looks around. They have arrived just at rush hour and people are bumping into them left and right.

"It looks the same and yet also different. I don't remember people dressed like this when I left." Jeffrey feels his skin tingle; he's back in New York.

"Well, I wasn't able to set an exact year, just move the time boundary. The instruments I had were not precise enough. I would have needed a microscope to start with and a really fine soldering iron."

"It's all right. What year is this?"

"1989. Pretty good work, if I do say so myself. I deserve a pat on the back." Kate pats herself on the back.

"1989, that means I've been gone for seven years."

"That explains the change in fashion."

"That is great. It means I've been gone as long for my aunt, as for me. That's very good." The thought of being back in his 'own' time cheers Jeffrey up.

"What do you want to do now?" Kate hangs the omni on her belt.

"I'll show you where I used to live. This way." Kate grabs Jeffrey by the hand as he starts to walk away.

"I don't want to loose you in this crowd," she explains.

"Maybe I'll stay here in New York, this is my time."

"Huh?" Kate gives his hand a little jerk.

"I meant ... you said the Omnitron tracks Voyagers when they are, not when they are actually voyaging."

"Yeah."

"So it makes sense to stay in one place. I mean we don't want to risk someone coming to get us and we voyage out of that place right at that moment. That's not the kind of hide and seek I want to be playing."

"I guess not."

"And 1989 is a pretty good time, right? You would know more about that than I."

"It's a pretty good time." Kate chuckles. "Dad always said you were the smartest person he had ever met."

-oOo-

Kate and Jeffrey are standing at the entrance of a high rise.

"I used to live here. 14th Floor. Then one evening, a guy drops into my bedroom, says things like 'well, this is not 1492. You're not Columbus. Is this even America?' Ralf, my dog, is freaking out, barking, jumping around. I try to calm him down, but he jumps around so wildly he pushes me out of the window. Seven years later, here I stand. Wondering if my aunt still lives in this building."

Kate is still holding on to Jeffrey's hand. "Maybe you should go in and ask the doorman."

"Yeah. Maybe I'd like to wait a little while before doing that."

"I understand."

They wait a while, staring at the door. A man and a woman exit the building. They stop standing face to face with Jeffrey.

"Mom?"

"Jeffrey?" the woman cries.

"Dad?"

"What's going on here?" the man asks.


	4. New York moments

"I'm sorry, but you look just like my folks," Jeffrey stammers.

"And you look just like my little boy." The woman takes his face in her hands and starts to cry. "Oh, John, doesn't he look just like our boy?"

"Emma, Emma dear. Let go of the young man. He's not our son," the man tells his wife. "We lost our son when he was twelve. I'm sorry, this has never happened before," he says to Jeffrey and Kate.

"I lost my folks when I was twelve," Jeffrey says.

"Oh, Jeffrey, I've missed you so much." The woman puts her arms around Jeffrey and kisses him on his cheeks. "Tell me, where have you been all this time?"

Jeffrey flaps helplessly with his arms, not sure how to respond to this treatment. John puts a hand on Emma's shoulder to pull her gently away from Jeffrey.

"I think maybe we should go somewhere where we can talk," Kate suggests.

-oOo-

A few minutes later they are sitting in a caffé, Jeffrey and Kate on one side of the table, his parents on the other.

On the way there Jeffrey threw Kate a puzzled look.

"These are my folks. I know they are. But how can they be? They're dead, my parents. They died a long time ago."

"Maybe these are doppelgängers?"

"No, no, too much of a coincidence. Their looks, their voices, the way they talk. That's all how my folks used to be. These _are_ my folks." He nodded his head determinedly as if to convince himself by shaking off any lingering doubts. "I told you it was a good idea to go to New York. Now I most definitely want to stay here. Stay with my folks."

"Don't get ahead of yourself." Kate tried to temper his enthusiasm. "You've lost your parents; these people lost their son. You've both suffered a loss. That doesn't mean these are your parents."

"They are my folks," Jeffrey said as they entered the caffé.

"Well, just don't tell them anything about voyaging, all right?"

"We were out of town for a few nights," Emma starts to tell her story. "Jeffrey was twelve. He stayed over at his aunt's. We shouldn't have gone; we should have stayed with him. When we came back he was gone. We never saw Jeffrey again. We think he was kidnapped from her apartment. Poor Elizabeth, it was quite a blow to her too. She blames herself. We never heard a word, not even for ransom. I can't even imagine what kind of people would just take a boy away from his parents."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Jeffrey feels a lump forming in his throat. These are his folks. Everything happened the way he remembered. He was staying with his aunt Elizabeth when Bogg dropped into his room and he fell out of the window. Everything is the same, except that his parents are still alive.

"Thank you." Emma takes a handkerchief from her purse. "And then just now, I see you and you look just like our Jeffrey."

"I am Jeffrey," Jeffrey says. Kate gives him a nudge. "I mean, my name is Jeffrey. I lost my parents when I was twelve. There was an accident. Bogg, Kate's dad, became my guardian. He took care of me over the years. We traveled around a lot. And then today I decided I wanted to see where I used to live in New York. We just got to New York today."

"It's my first trip to the big city," Kate says.

"What'll it be." A waitress has posted herself at the side of their table, pencil and pad ready to take orders.

"I'll have some coffee," John says.

"Me too," Emma nods.

"I rather have something to eat, it's been a while," Kate says.

"Shoot."

"I think I'd like a hot-dog. New York is hot-dogs, right?"

"We don't serve hot-dogs."

"Why don't you have a hamburger," Jeffrey quickly suggests. "That's also meat and bread." He remembers how he and Bogg used to make fools out of themselves when they didn't know the little details.

"Hamburger then," Kate says.

"Same for me, with fries and a coke."

Kate nods to the waitress that she would like to have the same. She bumps her knee against Jeffrey's, a silent thank you. He pats her on her leg, a silent 'thank you for bringing me back to my parents'.

"I'm gonna go wash my hands," Jeffrey gets up.

"Good idea. So will I." Emma gets up too and follows him to the restrooms.

"What do you think? Could he really be our son?" John asks.

"I--I really can't say," Kate hesitates.

"It took a very long time before my wife could live with the fact that Jeffrey was gone. I don't want all the nightmares coming back just because of some poser."

"I've known Jeffrey all my life, and he never struck me as a poser. Do you believe he could be your son?"

"He does look an awful lot like him, but I don't trust it. If he really is, why did it take him all this time to come back to New York? And who is this Bogg fellow? You say he's your dad, but could he have kidnapped our son, or bought him of his kidnappers, and then took him on as his own son, telling him that his parents had died?"

"My dad loves Jeffrey as his own son. He would never lie to him about his parents. My dad thinks family's too important for that." Kate tries not to glare at John for accusing her dad of kidnapping. "Why don't you test him? Ask him things only your Jeffrey can know? You know, father-son secrets. Find out that way if he's a poser."

"That's a very good idea. I will do that. But if you've known Jeffrey all your life, then how can he be our son? I don't remember you."

"Maybe I'm exaggerating a little."

"You're quite something. If Jeffrey really is my son, I guess I will have to put up with you too, being his girl-friend."

"I'm not his girl-friend. I'm just protective of him. Our water runs as thick as blood."

"Quite something." John smiles.

Emma and Jeffrey return. The waitress brings their orders.

"What were you talking about?" Emma asks.

"Quiz shows," John says.

"Oh, that's interesting. Jeffrey and I were talking, and he told me that they only just got to New York; they don't even have a place to stay yet. So I suggested they would stay with us."

"Emma?!'

"Why not? We have the room, and it would be nice to have some young people around the place. I believe it takes years of my own life."

"Emma, about the young people staying at our place ... "

"Oh, John, that would only be for one night. Maybe two. You're leaving again soon, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I'd like to get a move on again soon." Kate glances at Jeffrey as she says this.

"See, no problem there. We have the room for it, and we're now talking to them so they won't be strangers anymore either."

"I can't argue with your logic."

"Then you shouldn't." She pats her husband on the knee.

"Emma, I think you are quite something."

"Why, thank you, Kate. I think you and I will get along very well."

-oOo-

John is paying at the cash register. To explain why they haven't made proper lodging arrangements Jeffrey has told John and Emma that it was a spontaneous decision to go to New York. At which Kate mumbled something inaudible into her burger. Emma has gotten up to wash her hands again.

"Wow. I said to you I wanted to see my folks again, but I did not only see them, I got to talk to them, and I'm even gonna stay with them. I never thought this was going to happen. I'm so happy. I told you these are my folks. And we're gonna stay with them. I'm gonna stay with them forever. I'm never letting them out of my sight again."

Jeffrey is so happy he wants to drum on the table, drum on Kate, give Kate a hug, give anyone a hug for that matter. Kate reluctantly receives her hug.

"No, by the time you're 35 they'll kick you out of the

house and tell you to get a life of your own."

"What's the matter? Aren't you happy for me?"

"Oh, I'm happy for you. As happy as I could be." Kate forces a big smile. "Hurray. It's the omni I'm worried about. It's flickering from red to green and back. I can't make out whether it is good the way it's going here or bad."

"Maybe it's doing that because you tampered with the time boundary," Jeffrey suggests.

"Yeah, that must be it. I'm worried, that's all. I'm happy for you. Really, I am."

She tries to tickle him. Jeffrey can only make her stop do that by putting his arms around her again, and hold her very tight.

-oOo-

"So have you made any plans for tomorrow? If you're a day in New York, and Kate has never been here, you should take advantage of that." Emma takes Jeffrey by the arm and walks ahead with him. John and Kate stroll along behind them, without saying a word to one another.

"I guess I'll show her where I grew up. And she must have that hot-dog. I'll teach her some things about the history of New York. I think she'll be interested in that. I guess I will also take her to a museum or something."

"Our Jeffrey also always wanted to go to a museum. National history museum, modern history museum, anything with history in it. Except prehistory."

"I don't like prehistory," Jeffrey says.

"Right, except the prehistory. Our Jeffrey never cared much about dinosaurs."

"Neither do I. All you can tell about them is how big they got and when they died."

"Exactly. That's exactly what he used to say." Emma looks at him in amazement.

"I must have read that in a book somewhere," Jeffrey says.

He feels weird. On the one hand, everything feels right, these are his parents and he's happy they're all together. On the other hand, his parents died in a car crash when he was twelve. How could these people possible be his parents? Still, in their presence he feels the warmth he felt as a child. These must be his folks; there is no other way.

"I guess our Jeffrey got it from the same book. It's amazing what you two have in common. First I thought it was just looks, but now, in your ways, your character." Emma looks at him. She shakes her head. "But it's ridiculous to think that you're our Jeffrey. We lost him seven years ago. And I should not turn you into his substitute."

Jeffrey wants to tell her she's not turning him into a substitute, that he is the real thing. Kate apparently senses this 'cause she calls his name, in a demanding tone. How would he be able to explain about the last seven years without telling them about voyaging, he asks himself.

"This afternoon, when I first saw you, I immediately thought you were my parents. I don't want to turn you into substitutes either, but I'd be really happy if I could think that even though I haven't seen them for seven years, my folks are happy. And I wish they can be happy for me even if I'm not with them."

They have reached the building where the Joneses live. Emma pushes the button to call the elevator. John compliments Jeffrey on words well spoken. In the apartment John immediately hurries over to his study. Emma shows the youngsters into the living room.

"I'll make the bed in Jeffrey's old room, so one of you can sleep in there. Then the other one can sleep in the living room. Or would you like to sleep in the same room? I think I'm liberal about that," Emma says. She nods as to encourage herself to keep talking. "I would be if our Jeffrey was your age and brought home a girl-friend and they would like to sleep in the same room. I would let them sleep in the same room. So ... " Jeffrey is starting to look embarrassed.

"Separate rooms is fine with us," Kate quickly says. "I'd like to get an early night. Jeffrey's already slept for days before he woke up this morning, so I don't think he's ready for bed yet."

"Can I see the room though?" Jeffrey asks.

"Sure. It's down the hall." Emma leads the way. "I've kept it the same after Jeffrey disappeared."

"I see." Jeffrey touches the shelf with his action figures. The shelf with all his books. He takes one down. "This used to be my favorite book. I could read in it for hours; it never tired me."

"It was our Jeffrey's favorite too. Some people told me to change his room, put all his stuff away in boxes, 'cause if I kept walking into his room, expecting him to walk in again any moment, I would never get over him. But I didn't want to get over him."

"I can't see how you would want to," Kate says. "When my mom died I didn't want people to put my memories in boxes. I wanted to keep them where I could see them."

"I feel the same way." Emma gives Kate a warm smile. "I think Jeffrey would be okay with it if I let you stay in his room. I'll leave you two alone now. Jeffrey, I'll make a bed for you on the living room sofa." Emma leaves and close the door behind her.

"My old room. Exactly the same." Jeffrey sits down on the bed. "Well, a little neater then when I left it, but mom was always cleaning it up."

"Your parents seem to think I'm your girl-friend." Kate looks around the room.

"You're not my girl-friend."

"So, can't I be your girl-friend?" Kate looks at him defiantly.

"I've never thought about having a girl-friend." Jeffrey feels he has to defend himself under her stare. "Well, first I was voyaging, so there wasn't any time and perhaps I was too young for a girl-friend. Bogg seemed to have girl-friends a lot, so I guess it would have been possible. But then in the plantation, I was thinking of other things, though there were a few nice girls to be friends with. I guess if I wanted a girl-friend you would be a very good choice."

"Just teasing you." Kate pushes him against his shoulder.

Jeffrey rolls over then stops facing the window.

"I fell out of a window just like this. It feels weird looking at it. I'm really happy seeing my folks again. Do you think I could tell them it really is me?" Jeffrey turns his head to Kate. "I know it's them. It really is them."

"I think you should wait your time. I don't know how your mom's heart will take it. Your dad is a bit skeptic. He wants to test you on your father and son shared moments, see if you're the real thing, or a poser."

"That would be the right way, wouldn't it? That way I could really convince him it was me." Jeffrey sits up.

"I guess so."

"And then I could stay here, with them."

"Yeah."

"And I have you to thank for that. You're the one who found me on that plantation, you're the one who rigged the omni so we could voyage to my folks. I think I will write that book, you know, that autobiography you mentioned. Only this time it's not going to be 19th century literature, but late 20th century, and I'm going to dedicate my book to you."

"That's nice." Jeffrey hears a little break in Kate's voice.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. It just has been a very long day for me. And I'd like to get some sleep, early night." Her words don't reassure Jeffrey.

"It's the omni, isn't it?" Jeffrey finally faces what he has put off facing for the past hours. "It's not flickering from red to green, is it? It's a red light, isn't it?"

"No, it's flickering red to green," she says. Her voice sounds chocked. "I don't know what could be wrong. Maybe it's because I tamp..."

"It's my folks," Jeffrey interrupts. "They're alive, they shouldn't be. They should have died in that car crash. And now ... we have to ... go ... back in time ... and ..."

"No!" Kate replies fiercely. She shakes her head violently. "No, we don't."

Jeffrey looks up at her. She kneels down before him and takes his hands in hers.

"No," she says in a softer voice. "Jeffrey, you already lost your parents once. Whatever it is; we're not going to get your parents killed. I won't allow you loosing them again. You've been through so much already."

"But you said that if people live that are supposed to die, that influences everything, the bad and the good."

"That only goes for presidents and the like, you know, people who actually make a difference. So unless your dad is running for office ... it doesn't matter whether he died ten years ago, or fifty years into the future. Just tell your dad to set his political aspirations aside. Then he won't make a difference."

Jeffrey laughs through his tears. "You've never seen _It's a Wonderful Life,_ have you?"

"Huh?" Kate shrugs.

"It's a movie. Story of a man who thinks he's useless and then an angel shows him how much of a difference he has made in the lives of the people around him. One man can make a difference."

"Sure, to the people around him. In the larger scheme of things it's insignificant. Your parents not dying in that car crash, didn't effect Dad omniing into your room and taking off with you, did it?"

"Apparently not."

"Well then. All it got you were those horrible nightmares, which you will now replace with many pleasant dreams."

"Thanks, Kate." Jeffrey strokes her hair and gives her a hug. Kate gets up.

"Now, I think you should go to your dad and talk to him. Then I go to bed and dream of mine. Hopefully I can dream up a good explanation for the mess I've gotten us in. Goodnight." Kate kisses Jeffrey on the forehead and pushes him of the bed.

"Good night."

-oOo-

In the hall way Jeffrey runs into John holding a photo-album.

"Ah, Jeffrey, there you are. Here are some pictures I want to show you, and I want you to tell me what you see in them."

"Okay."

"We'll go into my study . Emma will be in the living room and I don't want to disturb her."

They sit down in the study. John opens the album. "Where was this taken?"

"At a Yankees' game. The last one we went to together, before I, you ... "

"Continue."

"You brought a base ball glove, so you could catch a fowl ball. You didn't catch one though; the kid in front of us did. Yankees lost, so it was a bit of a bad day. To make up for it, you bought me two hot-dogs. You didn't have to make up for anything; I always loved the days I spent with you. I've really missed them."

"And this one?" John turns back a few pages.

"Christmas at grandma," Jeffrey says about the picture of his father playing guitar. "Or, it was supposed to be. You first wanted to finish some work, so we left a few days later than we were supposed to, and then at the airport we got snowed in. That ruined everybody's Christmas spirit. You borrowed a guitar from someone and you and Mom started singing Christmas Carrolls, and other people joined in. That improved things. Everybody listened in silence when Mom told the _Night before Christmas_. That was my favorite Christmas."

Jeffrey remembers it all vividly. How upset he'd gotten that they were snowed in and couldn't get to grandma's anymore in time for midnight mass. How he'd shouted that it was all his father's fault. How his mom had to shout back, to make herself heard, that his father was a wonderful man and could do many things, but controlling the weather wasn't one of those things. How he first had been embarrassed when his parents started singing, but had grown very proud when people joined in and others told him what great singers his parents were. And how safe and warm he'd felt with his dad's arms around him when his mom told the story.

"You're not just saying that because of the presents you got that year?"

"All I remember is two self-knitted sweaters from grandma."

John laughs and points at another picture. One of a man and a little boy, both looking soaked yet determined. Jeffrey starts to laugh too.

"The fishing trip. Was it our first? I remember it was raining cats and dogs that day. You said that was good, meant that the fish would be coming to the surface and be easier to catch. Meanwhile we sat all day under that big umbrella shivering."

"But we came home with a lot of fish."

"Which you had bought on the road side. Grandma even complimented you on how well you had cleaned the fish."

"Which I had bought on the road side." John repeats. He closes the book and looks at Jeffrey. "Welcome home son."

"It's good to be home, Dad. I've missed you."

-oOo-

_A/N: I wrote this story before I read _A Stich in Time_. I've thought about changing the names of Jeffrey's parents to Bill and Kathy, but I really don't like the name Bill._


	5. Bogg's dream

Kate and Jeffrey appear in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. People have to go out of their way for them, others bump into them. Jeffrey looks over the heads of the people at the buildings across the street.

"I think we're in New York," he says. He shivers. "Winter in New York."

Kate checks the omni. "Yep, we're in New York. And we're in 1982. Hey, I did pretty good at moving the time boundary. I deserve a pat on the back." Kate pats herself on the back.

"1982. The year my parents die. The year Bogg drops into my bedroom. The year everything changed. What day?"

"February 16."

"The night my folks ..." Jeffrey suddenly starts running. Fighting himself a way through the crowd.

"Hey, wait up!" Kate hangs the omni on her belt and tries to run after him. The crowd doesn't give much way. Kate has a feeling she knows where Jeffrey is going and she hopes she can catch up with him there, before he does anything stupid.

Jeffrey reaches the building where he used to live with his parents. Maybe they're still at home. He rings their bell. No answer. Maybe they've just gone out and he can still stop them at their car. He finds his way into the parking lot. Where did they used to park? He looks around. There! The space is empty. What to do now? He walks back to the street, trying to collect his thoughts.

Kate stops in front of him, panting, pressing a hand in her side to stop the shooting pains. She folds trying to catch her breath. Holding up a hand indicating Jeffrey to wait. He waits a moment. Not for Kate, but trying to remember what route his father took.

"Jeff, good that I caught up with you." Kate manages in between gasping breaths. "I know what you want to do. I understand it, but you can't."

Then Jeffrey realizes where he can catch up with his parents. He turns around and starts running again, without saying a word to Kate.

"Jeffrey," she shouts after him. "You can't change your own history." She runs after him, ignoring her pain and tiredness.

Jeffrey finds himself at the avenue where his parents were killed. The avenue where they had their accident. It is dark, there is a snowy drizzle. The traffic rushes by him. Sometimes the lights are mere blurs. He has to cross the street. He waits for a small gap and runs across the first lane. In between lanes he stands still, waiting for the next gap. Cars are honking at him. Some drivers change their path a little to steer around him. He's sure they're shouting all kinds of abuse at him. A gap. He crosses the next lane.

When they had the accident they were in the most left lane. A driver from the opposite direction had lost control over the wheel, and had driven straight at them. A full frontal collision, killing both his parents, the passenger in the other car, but not the driver.

Jeffrey reaches the middle of the road. Now what? How can he stop the on-storming cars? Behind him he hears a car come to an emergency stop. Its tires squeak on the road. He hears a thud. Cars on both sides of the road pull over. He sees his parents' car three cars down. Like other drivers his dad is getting out of the car to see what's going on, if he can lend assistance. People are shouting about ambulances.

What happened? Jeffrey turns around. He sees a car with a dent in the windscreen. The driver behind it seems to be in shock. Some people huddle around in a circle by the side of it. Someone was hit by a car. He gets a bad feeling about this. He gets a little closer and peers through the gap the huddle leaves and stares at the person on the ground. Kate ...

-oOo-

The ambulance has arrived. Paramedics are with Kate. Police is directing traffic. His father drives by slowly. Jeffrey looks at himself in the backseat. The boy looks him straight in the eyes. With curiosity? With accusation? He has saved his parents' lives, but at a cost. The paramedics put Kate on a gurney.

"Will she be all right?" he hears himself ask.

"Can't say that yet," the paramedic replies. "What were you doing in the middle of the road anyway?"

"I wanted to prevent an accident." Jeffrey looks away.

The paramedic frowns at him. "Fine job you did there," he mumbles. He closes the door to the ambulance.

"Where are you taking her?"

"Are you related?"

"Friend of the family." With a shock he realizes. "How will I tell her dad?"

"Can't help you there, but we're taking her to ..."

--

Jeffrey doesn't hear the location. He suddenly is in an all together different place. He's sitting on the bed in a small bedroom. The desk by the window is supporting a large pile of papers and books. Jeffrey drops the phone he was holding to his ear. Where is he? What happened? He gets up. Bewildered he looks around the room. There are piles of books and clothes everywhere. Even the bed is covered. _I really need to clean up in here_. The thought surprises him.

Someone's shouting through the phone, he picks it up again. "Hello?"

"Oh, hello. Are you back?"

"Mom?"

"Yes, Mom. As I was saying. I know you have your own life now, being a student and all, but are you coming home for your father's birthday this weekend?"

"Dad's birthday?"

"Yes, you remember, you have a father and a mother. Those old people that live in the house you grew up in. Patiently waiting for you to return a phone call after two weeks."

"I would never take two weeks to call you back."

"Sure. Must have been the dog that ate all those messages you left me. So how about it, are you coming over?"

"Yes, I guess. Mom, I don't feel very well right now."

"Okay, I'll talk to you this weekend. Love you."

"Love." Jeffrey drops his hand holding the phone. What has happened? He sinks down.

--

Jeffrey sits down on a chair in the hospital waiting room. What is this? Where is he now? He sees a nurse walk past. A hospital. How did he get here? He sees a policeman talk to a doctor. They look in his direction. He clenches his fist. He feels warm liquid spilling over his hand. He looks down. He was holding a plastic cup of coffee. Now he's wearing it. The doctor and the policeman come over to him.

"How do you feel?" the doctor asks him.

"Disoriented," he answers truthfully. "How's Kate?"

"We've stabilized her. But she has some serious injuries."

"Will she be all right?"

"Hard to say. We'll have to see how she makes it through the night."

"Can I see her?"

"Only for a moment. Come with me." The doctor leads the way, Jeffrey follows her.

--

The dial tone disturbs Jeffrey from his thoughts. Again somewhere else? No, back in the messy bedroom. He hangs up the phone. He's trying to figure out what's going on. Why is he switching between places? What's going on? It started after he saved his folks' lives. And Kate had that accident. Kate! She may know what's going on. He has to go and ask her. He grabs his coat of the back of the chair and runs out of the room.

--

Jeffrey sits down by the bed. He listens to the reassuring beeps of the heart monitor. He takes Kate's hand in his.

"I'm sorry," he says. Then he's quiet. What else can he say? He wants to ask what's going on. But does she know? Can she answer?

"Okay," Kate says. Jeffrey jumps up.

"Can you hear me? Can you talk to me?"

"Little."

He can hear it takes her great effort to utter just that one word. But he has to ask her. He has to know. Why is he going back and forth between two lives, like it was some kind of ping pong game? He asks her.

"Fault. Your," she replies.

"My fault? Why? What did I do?"

"You. Change. Time."

"Yes, yes, I changed time. I changed time all the time. But I have never experienced anything like this before. What is different this time?" Jeffrey is nearly shouting.

A nurse walks in. "Hey. This patient needs her rest. If you can't calm down and sit quietly, I will have to ask you to leave."

"Stay."

--

Stay, Kate said, but Jeffrey finds himself on a bus. A bus on his way to see Kate. Why is this bus taking so long?

When he's finally at the hospital he runs past the nurse at the desk shouting "I'm here to see Kate Bogg."

"Hey, you can't go in there," she shouts after him. He goes into the room the doctor had taken him before. It's empty. Where is Kate?

"Where is Kate?" he asks the nurse that came in after him.

"Who?"

"The girl, the woman that was in here, traffic accident, badly wounded."

"I'm sorry, but you're too late. She passed away an hour ago."

What? Kate's dead? Jeffrey sinks down on the empty bed holding his head in his hands. Kate's dead. He's leaping between lives. What did he do? He feels like crying. He allows the feeling and starts to sob.

"Were you very close?" the nurse asks.

"She was the daughter of my best friend. It's my fault she's dead."

"I'm sorry," the nurse says.

--

Jeffrey hears the beeps of the heart monitor again. He quickly sits down.

"Kate. You're alive."

"Barely."

"Kate. In that other life I keep getting into someone told me you were dead. I'm so glad you're not. But I would really like to know what's going on. You said because I changed time. But that makes no sense. I've changed time before, but this has never happened."

"Can't. Change. Own. Time."

"Can't change own time? I don't get it. What does that mean?"

Kate takes a while before she replies. "If change own time. Time gets confused."

"Confused? How?"

"You not same person. As before change. Then not make change. You two people. Time confused."

Jeffrey is starting to understand what's going on. If you change time, that changes everything, the good and the bad. He prevented the accident that killed his parents, but perhaps also prevented himself from becoming a Voyager. That explains himself as a student. But he can only prevent the accident as a Voyager, not as a student. As a student he couldn't have gotten back in time and prevented the accident, which would mean he would become a Voyager. Time got confused: he is a Voyager and at the same time he isn't. It's confusing him.

"So that's why I have these alternating lives. And is it just for me?"

"Everyone in your life."

"Everyone in my life? So Bogg, my folks, all those people I've met through out history, they're experiencing this? They're hopping between lives?"

Jeffrey tries to imagine what that is like. Benjamin Franklin who never flew his kite alternating with Benjamin Franklin who did fly his kite. Perhaps not much of a difference there. Werner von Braun being ping ponged between life in the USA and the USSR. "That's bad."

"Yes. You screwed up history."

Jeffrey thinks he can detect a little smile in Kate's face, or is that her wincing with pain?

"Can we stop it? Reverse this effect? Unconfuse time?"

"No. Can't change own time. More confused."

"So we're caught? For ever switching between two of our lives?"

"I'm not."

"You're not? Why?"

"Think."

And Jeffrey thinks. If he didn't become a Voyager, he wouldn't have been lost in time, Bogg wouldn't have looked for him for all those years, Bogg wouldn't have had Kate. He squeezes her hand.

"You weren't born," he whispers.

-oOo-

Phineas Bogg wakes up in a cold sweat.


	6. The Morning After

Bogg can't remember ever having felt this powerless. Not in recent years anyway. He's pacing up and down the lane to the School. He wants to do something, build something, break something. Doesn't matter what, just as long as it takes his mind of Kate and Jeff's well-being. Last night, after his nightmare, and after his heart stopped pounding in his throat, he went to the Omnitron to see how they were doing. He saw Kate sound asleep in a bed. She always looked sweetest when she slept. How much she looked like her mother. Olivia also was sweetest when she slept. Bogg smiles to the memory. He didn't see Jeffrey in the picture, but he trusts the kid is all right. Kate would never be able to look this relaxed if something were wrong with Jeff.

The kid. He should stop thinking of him as the kid. Bogg turns around and paces back to the cottage. Jeff's nineteen now. A man. He should come up with a new nickname for him. Maybe something will spring to mind when he sees him again. He thought that, upon his return he would get to spend a lot of time with Jeffrey, make him feel welcome in his new home, apologize for not finding him sooner, or earlier in the boy's life. It makes him sick to think he only spent a few minutes with Jeffrey, then he went to the Council to report on the outcome of his mission and now Jeff is gone. With Kate. And an omni. Perhaps that's the one good thing about it, they're not lost in time without an omni.

Yesterday, after he came home from his meeting, he first thought Kate was showing Jeffrey around the Island. He didn't start to worry until hours later they still hadn't returned. He looked all over the Island, but could not find them. Alexander mentioned they had been in the School earlier. He and Joseph met Bogg in the hall of the School.

Bogg replays the conversation in his mind.

"They seem to be gone," Alexander chips in his bit.

"Gone? This is an Island. How far could they have gotten?"

"Well, there's also an omni missing."

"So?"

"So? Jeffrey Jones is missing, your daughter is missing, and an omni is missing. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what has happened here," Joseph states. "It's not like it's the first time. She nearly cost us all a whole lot of trouble, trying to change her own history."

Bogg glares at him. "That was different. She came back, we sorted things out and she said she would never do it again. She understands now that you can't change your own history."

"Phineas, you are horrendously naïve when it comes to your daughter."

"A father's obligation," Bogg replies. He isn't going to listen to Joseph telling him what he can and cannot think of his daughter.

"Whatever. Fact remains an omni's missing and so is your daughter." Bogg replies with another glare. "Shall we go see where they are?" Joseph asks with a friendly smile. Bogg has to brace himself not to wipe that smile of his face.

The three of them go to the Omnitron. Bogg tries to suppress the feeling of awe he always gets looking at the machine with its displays and blinking lights.

"When I heard Kate and an omni were missing, I immediately checked the Omnitron. That's them in screen A16." Joseph transfers the image to the larger center screen. "No sound I'm afraid."

Bogg looks at the image. He sees Jeffrey throw his arms around Kate and Kate struggling to get out of his bearhug. Both of them are laughing. He is glad to see the kid laughing; he was afraid that would take a very long time.

"And look where they are: 1989. Now, how do you suppose that happened, considering they took an omni with its time boundary set at 1970?" Joseph continues.

Bogg shrugs. "My old omni had a time boundary set at 1970. It landed me in 1982 just the same. And," he points out, "if it hadn't, we perhaps would not be having this conversation."

"Seriously, Phineas. It's one thing to be naïve."

"What are you implying?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

Bogg knows very well what Joseph is implying: Kate reset the time boundary. He has to admit that would be something she could do. Although he would never admit to it out loud. And Kate and Jeffrey are in 1989 now, the year Jeffrey would be in if Bogg had never omnied into his life. It's just too big a coincidence not to have the hand of Kate in it.

"So, we've established Kate and Jeffrey took off with an omni without asking; now let's get them back."

"No," Joseph replies.

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

"If Kate thinks she's mature enough to voyage, I have to trust she is mature enough to come back to the Island."

"Trust? You've never trusted Kate before. Why start now?" Bogg raises his voice.

"Now, now, Phineas, calm down. It's not like Kate hasn't received Voyager training," Joseph tries to say in a soothing voice. "And we are going to monitor her, so we can pluck her out of time if things are getting out of hand." Joseph spreads his arms to encourage the others to leave the room.

"What about Jeff? I've only just found him. He's been lost in time for five years. You can't make him be lost in time again just because you want to teach Kate a lesson."

"They have an omni; they can come home any time they want. We're monitoring them. There's nothing for you to worry about. Kate's an intelligent young lady. Jeffrey Jones has experience voyaging. I'm sure the two of them will be all right."

Reluctantly Bogg lets himself be ushered out of the room.

So there he is, twenty-four hours after Jeffrey woke up, pacing the lane because there isn't anything else he can do. He turns round and goes back the same way. He notices he passes Susan. He seems to recall he passed her a couple of times before. He turns back and greets her.

"Did I just pass you three times?"

"I didn't think you noticed."

"I didn't." He smiles ruefully.

"Can I walk with you? If you slow down a bit?"

"Sure." He proffers his arm. She takes it and they proceed down the lane at a slower pace.

"How are you, Phineas?" she asks in a caring voice.

He suppresses the urge to snap at her: 'How do you think I'm feeling?' "Worried sick," he replies. "Kate has never been off the Island this long. She doesn't know what the real world is like. And Jeff. I only just got him back and now he's lost again. Well, lost ... he isn't here anymore. Why did they do it?"

"What makes you think they did this on purpose?"

"They didn't do it on purpose?"

"I don't know. They're not here. I can't ask them. But why do you think they did it on purpose?"

"They're not back yet."

Susan frowns at Bogg so he explains further.

"If it was an accident they would have tried to get back already."

"Maybe they ran into some trouble: found a red light they thought they needed to get straight."

"They're in 1989. Jeff doesn't know what is supposed to happen there."

"That never stopped you from trying to handle red lights."

Susan's little joke doesn't catch on with Bogg. "I had a guidebook. Later I had Jeff, but as I said: he doesn't know what should happen in 1989."

"Kate might know. Don't look at me like that. Kate paid a lot better attention in School than you ever did."

Bogg growls. "Kate has never voyaged. Never properly anyway. She doesn't know how to handle herself."

"Jeffrey's with her. He'll take care of her."

"Yeah, he would." Unless five years in slavery has completely changed his character. Bogg wonders about that for a moment. The time he spent with the kid yesterday was too short to make a proper judgment.

"And Kate has received more Voyager training than any recruit we have ever sent into the field. Granted, it's all theoretical knowledge, but between the two of them, I'm sure they can handle themselves."

"I guess so, but I don't have to like it they're away."

"Of course not. No one is asking you to like it. I'm just giving you a few suggestions so that you can stop having kittens."

"Having kittens?"

"It's an expression."

"I've never heard of it."

"You've never been pacing around like this. I've never felt the need to use it."

"I guess."

"Will you be all right, Phineas?"

"Yeah," he says reassuringly. "You're right. Jeff and Kate can handle themselves. And they'll be right back after they've fixed that red light they've encountered."

"Yes. Give it a couple of hours. Then they'll be back, telling you how much they've missed you."

"Or how much they like voyaging and want to keep on doing it."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Another expression."

"I've heard of that one, thank you." They reach Susan's house. "Thanks for the talk."

"Just a few more hours, Phineas."

"Yeah. I should get back to the cottage. Enjoy the peace and quiet for as long as it lasts."

Susan gives him a kiss on the cheek and a hug. "That's the spirit."

Feeling better than before Bogg returns to his cottage.

-oOo-

Jeffrey opens his eyes and has a look around the room. It's different from the one he woke up in the previous morning. Except for one thing: there's a person sitting in a chair, reading a book.

"Why is that always when I wake up, you're sitting there reading a book?" he asks.

"Old habits die hard, I guess," Kate says. She closes the book. "How did you do on the test last night?"

"Good. I passed. They're really my folks, and they believe I'm really their son. Dad and I had years of catching up to do. So we stayed up hours talking after that."

"I hope you didn't tell him too much about voyaging."

"I managed to leave it out of the conversation. I thought it better not to say anything, not at this time anyway. I would have loved to tell him though, you know, that I was there when history was being made. That I've given history a push in the right direction now and then. But it would just be too weird. He'd think I was mad or something."

Jeffrey stretches himself out, whirls his legs out from under the blanket and sits up on the sofa. He's wearing an old pyjama John gave him, it fits much better than Bogg's handy downs he wore the other day. "In case you're wondering, I'm staying here. With my folks."

"Goes without saying. Look what I found." Kate gives him the book she was reading.

"Bogg's guidebook."

"Dog's teeth marks and everything."

Jeffrey runs his finger over the big V on the front cover. He always voyaged without a guidebook, and now that his voyaging days are over he holds one in his hands. Jeffrey smiles at the irony of that.

"This one'll come in handy now that I'll be voyaging alone after this. Just as I was getting used to you." Kate smiles.

"You're welcome to stay. Till someone comes to collect you."

"Yeah. I thought about what you said yesterday. I think they would sooner set the Omnitron to call the omni home than they'd send someone round to take me back. Homing an omni only works if you keep voyaging."

"You don't have to leave right away. Stay here a while. I'll show you where I grew up. Get you that hotdog."

"The sooner I'll be on my way, the less trouble I'll be in. I hope. Shows an effort that I wanted to be homed."

"Then this is good bye then, isn't it? I think I'll miss you. I've only known you for a day, but it was quite a day. Tell Bogg thanks for everything, and that I'll never forget him."

"If I'll ever see him again I'll tell him."

Jeffrey gets up to give Kate a hug. "Take care."

"You take care as well."

"Are you leaving?" John comes into the living room. "Why don't you stay?"

"I really shouldn't. There are a few other places I have to drop into before going home. I'd like to get a move on. It was very nice meeting you." Kate extends a hand to John.

"At least stay for breakfast. You brought back our son; we should give you at least a full stomach before you hit the road."

"Breakfast will be all right. I guess I can spare another half hour."

They sit down for breakfast. Emma is fussing over Jeffrey. Kate is amused by it. Jeffrey a little embarrassed, but enjoying it at the same time.

"I've seven years of fussing to catch up to. So sit back and suffer."

"Oh, please, fuss away."

There's a knock on the front door. John gets up to answer it. He returns followed by two police officers.

"Kate Bogg?" the first one says. "We're placing you under arrest for involvement in the kidnapping of Jeffrey Jones in 1982."

"Excuse me?"

The other policeman takes Kate by her right arm and turns it behind her back. He cuffs her while the first one continues talking.

"You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney present during questioning."

"What's going on?" Jeffrey asks.

"I'm sorry, son, but we had to do this," Emma says, holding on to his arm, rubbing his back with her other hand.

"Had to do what? She had nothing to do with my disappearance. She only brought me back."

"But she knows the man who kidnapped you. He should take responsibility for what he did."

"Bogg didn't kidnap me. I fell out of the window, and he saved my life."

"Oh dear. The excitement is becoming too much for him." Emma feels Jeffrey's forehead.

"Take her out off here," John says.

"Come on." Kate is escorted out off the apartment in between the two policemen. She throws a last desperate look at Jeffrey.

"It's going to be all right, Jeffrey. It's all going to be all right. You're with us again." Emma puts her arms around Jeffrey, and makes him rest his head on her shoulder.

-oOo-

"Kate Bogg. You mind being named after a toilet?"

"I'd like to think the toilet was named after me."

"Haha, humor. Are you sure you don't want an attorney?" Kate nods. "What you're here for is no laughing matter."

"Then why do they send in a clown to question me?"

"More of that delightful Boggian wit. Where do you come up with these things?"

"I let my surroundings inspire me." Kate is sitting across the table of a detective. They're in an interview room at a police station. By the door sits a policewoman in uniform.

"They inspire me too. To ask you questions. Would you like to hear some of them?"

"If you must."

"You were brought here because we have reason to believe you are involved in the kidnapping of Jeffrey Jones on 14th September 1982. Almost seven years ago."

"I was eleven seven years ago."

"Do you know what the statute of limitation is on kidnapping?"

"I don't even know what statute of limitation is."

"It means that if after a certain amount of years the crime isn't solved the perpetrator goes scott free."

"Ah."

"And on kidnapping the statute of limitation is more than seven years."

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

"So, seen as the statute of limitation on kidnapping is more than seven years, and the kidnapping of Jeffrey Jones was a little less than seven years ago, that makes me entitled to question you on said kidnapping."

"But, seen as Jeffrey Jones was kidnapped some seven years ago and I am eighteen now, that made me eleven at the time. An unlikely suspect, I would say."

"We're going to play this the hard way, aren't we?"

"Which is the way you like it." Kate winks at him.

"You sure you're eighteen?"

"Quite sure."

"You mind if I smoke?"

"I do. Smoking kills."

"That's too bad." He lights up. "Okay, I'll accept you were too young for actual involvement. You didn't throw a hood over Jeffrey's head, tied him up and carried him off over your shoulder. But you could have stood on look out."

"Look out for what?"

"You tell me."

"I wasn't there."

"But you know someone who was there." The detective looks at Kate encouragingly. She looks back at him as blank as possible. "C'mon, you can give me a name. You know someone who was there."

"Jeffrey."

"There was him, but that was not the name I was looking for. Try again. Who else was there?" Kate shrugs. "Okay, let's try this another way. Tell me about your dad."

"What about him?"

"What kind of father was he?"

"Best father I ever had."

"You've had more than one?"

"No. He's the best by default."

"Is he a dishonest man? Does he lie, or steel? Or

something like that?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Is he good at hiding things?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Are you two close, you and your dad?"

"Pretty close."

"Does he tell you everything."

"He tells me enough."

"Where's your dad?"

"I don't know." Kate shrugs.

"He didn't tell you?"

"He told me 'see you later'. That's enough."

"How's that enough?"

"Tells me he's gonna be back later."

The detective snorts. "What about your mom?"

"My mom died."

"When?

"When I was thirteen.

"Any siblings, brothers and sisters?"

"No."

"It was just you and your dad?"

"Yeah."

"And Jeffrey."

"Jeffrey came later."

"How much later?"

"Five years."

"Jeffrey came when you were five years old?" The detective frowns lightly.

"No. He came when I was five years older. When I was eighteen. I've only known him for a day."

"We're not getting anywhere like this." The detective leans back in his seat.

"Wouldn't say that. I've learned a lot today."

"Like what?"

"Well, I learned what statute of limitation is. About your favorite form of self-execution, and you bite your finger nails. Probably when you're not smoking."

"Yet, I haven't learned anything I wanted to know."

"I didn't want to know these things either."

"Let's go back to the reason why you're here. To give me the name of the person who kidnapped Jeffrey Jones."

"If it was a one man job."

"Now we're getting somewhere."

"How's that?"

"You just indicated that there were more people involved in the kidnapping."

"No, I didn't. I just indicated that if one person did it you'll need one name, if more than one person were involved you'd need more than one name."

"Are you going to give me any names?"

"I don't know any names."

"Okay. I'll give you a name. Phineas Bogg. That name ring a bell?"

"My dad goes by that name."

"And he kidnapped Jeffrey Jones."

"No."

They stare at each other for a moment.

"Then explain to me the following: Jeffrey Jones shows up on his parents' doorstep, seven years after he was kidnapped from his aunt's apartment. He claims that in the mean time he has been traveling with his self-appointed guardian, one Phineas Bogg, your dad. Explain to me: how did Jeffrey Jones get from his aunt's apartment into the custody of Phineas Bogg?"

"Hmm. It's not obvious at first, is it?"

"No, it's not. How would you explain it?"

"Jeffrey fell from the window, and Dad jumped after him to save him."

"Jump from a 14th story window to save a boy. How come they weren't both splattered on the pavement?"

"Dad has this device with which he can leave one place and go to another."

"What? Like a Transporter?"

"A what?"

"You know, a Transporter. Star Trek. _Beam me up, Scotty_?"

Kate shrugs. "Never heard of it."

"It's quite refreshing to meet a youngster who hasn't spent half her life in front of the TV."

"We don't have TV."

"What are you Amish or something?"

"Something."

Another silence falls.

"Let's get back to this transporter of your dad's. He used it when Jeffrey fell out of the window." Kate nods. "So, he did kidnap Jeffrey Jones."

"No, he saved his life."

"Why didn't he bring him back?"

"Transporter didn't work anymore. He couldn't get back here."

"Hmm, to sum it up: Jeffrey fell out of the window; your dad jumped out after him and saved both there lives by using his special transporter. Because this transporter malfunctioned he could not come back to New York anymore to return Jeffrey to his parents, but instead spent seven years traveling the globe with him. Are there anymore fantastic stories you'd like to tell me?"

"Sure, I can make something up. If I'm not going anywhere, neither will you."

"That's where you're wrong. Interview terminated at 11.33." The detective turns off the tape recorder and stubs out his cigarette. "We're gonna keep you here a while. So you can think of a story that is more realistic."

-oOo-

"This young lady would like one of our rooms, without a view." The policewoman that takes her from the interview room to the desk says to the policeman at the desk.

"Lovely, we have a few vacancies. How long would you like to be staying?"

"Well, I'm just passing through, so one night only will be sufficient."

"All right, one night." The policeman takes out a book and starts writing. "Is there anything you'd like us to keep in our safe?"

"Not really."

"Empty your pockets," the policewoman encourages. "And your belt and shoe laces."

"What's that?" the policeman points at the omni.

"An ornament."

"Is that gold?"

"It's an alloy. Just looks like it."

"One pocket knife, one bulky metal object. No ID, keys, money or credit card?" Kate shrugs using only her left shoulder. "Okay, Jackson, you can show miss Bogg to room 14."

-oOo-

Jeffrey sits on his bed facing the window. His hands clenched around the guidebook. He's wearing some clothes from his dad. They're a bit baggy. He's practically skin over bones, but because he always was a skinny kid, his parents didn't really question that. Well, his mom said something about this Bogg character feeding him properly. He had replied that Bogg always had done his best.

He looks down at the guidebook, traces the V with his index finger. He's home now. He's got his parents back. For some weird reason. It's what he has always wanted, but he can't quite figure out how it happened. He remembers how they died. He was there. But history can change. He's glad history has changed in this case. Too bad history hasn't changed for the part he was a slave.

Jeffrey opens the guidebook and looks up his time in Ceylon. There's not much there. Nothing he could have done to get Voyagers' attention. He flicks through the pages, stops to read a passage here and there. With the aid of Jeffrey Jones, he says to himself when he sees an event where he helped give history a push. Bit of an ungrateful job Voyaging. You don't get recognized in the annals of history for lending a hand.

He looks out of the window. He shouldn't be reminiscing about voyaging. He should be thinking about ways to get Kate out of her predicament. A little knock on his door.

"Jeffrey, can I come in?" his mom asks.

"Sure, come in."

Emma enters the room and sits down on the bed. "I sat here often when you were away. Just here on the bed, facing the door. Waiting for you to walk back in. I always knew you would be back some day."

"I'm sorry it took so long."

"Me too. But why are you hiding in here? Are you waiting for someone to come back?"

Jeffrey hadn't realized he was waiting, but in a way he is. He's waiting for Bogg to drop back in so he can tell him thanks for everything, here's your guidebook back, and you're daughter is currently under arrest. Sorry about that.

"It's about that girl, Kate, we had arrested? We didn't know what else to do. She knows that man that kidnapped you. She can lead the police to him. He should be punished for what he did."

"Bogg didn't kidnap me. He saved my life."

"Then why didn't he ever bring you back to us?"

"He couldn't. He ..." The only explanation Jeffrey can think of is that Bogg's time traveling device didn't work anymore. But an explanation involving time travel is probably not going to sit well with his mother. "We tried our best to get back here, but we got held up, and then he lost me too. Bogg spent years looking for me. When he finally did I came back here right away." That's as close to the truth as he can get. "You see, Bogg had nothing to do with my disappearance. All he did was trying to get me back."

Emma takes his hand in hers. "I understand. I'm sure the police will let Kate go as soon as they realize that too."

They sit in silence for a moment.

"I understand why you did it," Jeffrey says after a while. "If it had been the other way around, I would have done the same."

Emma squeezes his hand, then changes the subject. "Your dad's clothes are a bit baggy for you. What'd you say we go shopping for new clothes for you this afternoon?"

"Sounds good. Uh, would it be okay if I went shopping on my own?"

"You don't want to be seen shopping with your mom. You're afraid I will harm your carefully cultivated image of an independent man?"

"It's not that. It's ..."

"It's okay. How about we go to the mall together, I sit sipping coffee at Starbuck's while you buy yourself an outfit at whatever shop is hip these days."

"Sounds good." Jeffrey smiles.

"All right. It's a date." Emma gets up and gives him a hug. "First, we'll have lunch and then we'll go, okay."

"Okay."

-oOo-

Kate's afternoon has been pretty uneventful. About an hour after she was put in the holding cell she received a meal. For the rest of the afternoon she is left to herself. She doesn't allow herself to think the situation is hopeless. The omni is near. If it stays long enough in one place, a Voyager is bound to come and check out what's wrong. Then that one can get her out of this cell.

Back on the Island she can go back to library duty for the rest of her life. Her last escapade with an omni got her two years of detention. She was told she was lucky Voyagers had given up on their practice of banishing bad elements and that she was a minor. She was strictly forbidden of even touching an omni ever again. Which pretty much limited her choice of jobs within Voyagers to library and legal. Even history teachers have to have field experience.

Kate is surprised that, given her history with voyaging, Jeff and she weren't already called home when they left Dallas. That was hours after they had left. Surely, someone had noticed they were missing? Dad for one. Why hadn't they been homed yet? Was this some kind of punishment? You want to voyage so much? Well, we're going to let you. What about Jeffrey? Are they just punishing the good with the bad? What kind of justice is that? Luckily Jeffrey has found his parents so he doesn't have to suffer her punishment with her. But do they on the Island even know that the home setting of this omni doesn't work?

She could be voyaging until forever. That is, if she will ever get out of this cell. That might take a while. Kate seems to recall that it wasn't usance in the US in 1989 to hold people in a cell for prolonged periods of time without any form of trial. Maybe Jeff'll try to get her out 'cause he knows it's not right she's being held. Kate gives herself a wry smile. She has more reasons for optimism than Jeffrey ever had. Kate sums them up: one, someone knows where she is; two, someone knows when she is; three, slavery was abolished over a hundred years ago.

She leans against the wall. She does hope however that New York Police keeps good records; she wouldn't like to get lost in the system for five years. She's a move around freely kind of person, not a sit around person. Luckily American holdings cells have three walls, and one made out of bares, which gives a sense of spaciousness.

-oOo-

Hours later the cell door opens again. "Get up. You're free to go."

"Oh? And I hadn't even thought of a better story."

"Charges against you have been dropped. So get up, and get out."

"I will." Kate jumps to her feet. At the desk her things are returned to her.

"And stay out of trouble," the detective tells her.

"I will on your watch."

Kate sits down on the bench at the front desk to put the shoe laces back in her shoes. Jeffrey, who has been waiting for her, sits down next to her.

"I'm sorry."

"About what?"

"That my folks got you arrested."

"Yeah, so am I."

"I've tried to convince my folks you had nothing to do with my disappearance. That even Bogg is innocent in that. I'm not sure it really caught on." He stares at his hands in his lap. "Mom and I went shopping. That is, she went to get some coffee and I came here to get you out. Maybe I've already been gone too long. I should go back to her before she'll be worried. The police dropped the charges against you, because I, as the victim, did not want to press charges against you."

"Well, thanks for that." Kate has finished relacing her shoes and turns her head to him. "I mean that, thanks."

"Sure. You've already done so much for me, and I felt responsible." Jeffrey puts his hands deep in his jacket's pockets.

"You were responsible, in a way. Water under the bridge, forgive and forget. Thanks for getting me out, and I'll be on my merry way."

"Why didn't you use the omni to get away anyway?"

"Thought about that. But most of the time someone was holding onto me, and I didn't want to take anyone like that with me. And also, I wanted to say a proper good bye to you. I know I've only actually known you for a day, but through my dad's stories I feel like I've known you all my life." Kate picks up the omni she put beside her and looks at it and then back at Jeffrey. "It feels a bit awkward saying my final good bye while I'm being dragged away by men in uniform. I mean, I'm never going to see you again, I think."

"True. So again, thanks for everything, and tell Bogg thanks for everything too. I'm going to miss you, both of you."

"I'm going to miss you too." Kate throws her arms around him, thereby hitting him with the omni. The omni is triggered ...


	7. On the Road, Again

_Sullivan County, 16 August 1969_

Kate holds on to Jeffrey tighter. She squeezes her eyes closed and repeats a little mantra in her head: this didn't just happen; this didn't just happen.

Jeffrey struggles out of Kate's embrace and pushes her away.

"Oh, Jeff, I'm so sorry."

"Why? Why did you do that?"

"It was an accident. I'm sorry."

"Sure you are."

He grabs the omni and gives Kate a push. She falls down on her ass in the muddy field. Jeffrey opens the omni and sets the dials for New York 1989. He presses the trigger button.

Nothing happens. He tries again.

"And this worthless piece of junk doesn't work anymore either." He throws the omni on the ground.

"Hey! Careful with that." Kate dives for the omni. "If it had fallen on its trigger button we would have been stuck here!"

"I've just been pushing the trigger button. It doesn't work."

"You've tried to leave me here?" Kate asks in a quieter voice.

"I ..." Jeffrey looks at her. Yes, that's what he tried to do. He shakes his head. "I'm sorry. It's just ... my folks ... I wanted to get back to them."

Kate nods.

Jeffrey rubs a hand through his hair. "Where are we now?"

Kate opens the omni. The dials have reset themselves.

"New York State, August 16, 1969."

"Woodstock." Jeffrey drops himself to the ground and buries his face in his hands.

Kate closes the omni, obscuring the red light it is showing.

This can't be happening. This is not real. He must be dreaming. He did not just voyage. He's still lying on the couch in his folks' apartment, asleep, dreaming. He should pinch himself to verify. Jeffrey quietly pinches himself. That hurts. So he's awake now. He slowly opens his eyes. Either his mom redecorated while he took a nap or he's sitting in a field of something green and purple. He's afraid it's the latter. From the corner of his eyes he sees someone sitting on her knees. He turns his head.

"I was hoping it was all a dream."

"Me too," Kate replies softly.

"Does the omni still work?"

"Parts of it at least."

"Which parts?"

"Red light."

Great. "Can you take me back to 1989?"

"I don't know. You said you tried." Kate looks down at the omni. "But with the red light here, it could mean the 1989 from here is different from the 1989 we just left. It's relativity theory." She gives Jeffrey a wry smile. "Don't ask me to explain further; I only understand very little of it."

"You're saying that meeting my parents was some kind of Alternative History? That it was a fluke their son had gone missing?"

"Well. It was. You know that."

"I hoped it was something different. I guess I knew it was too good to be true. We landed in an alternate history. And you wanted to leave me behind there."

"You wanted to stay there."

"What would have happened to me if someone had ironed out the ripple from which the alternate history came?"

"I don't know." Kate shrugs.

Jeffrey doesn't know either, but, all the same, he would have preferred to take his chances in the alternate history. "What do we do now?"

"I don't know. Fix the red light? August 16, 1969. Any thoughts?"

Jeffrey snorts. Another generation of Bogg relying on him to drum up the answers. He should have brought the guidebook -- he would at least have had the satisfaction of throwing it at her -- but his mom would have thought it weird if he had brought a book to go shopping.

"You don't know much, do you? You've said I don't know three times in the space of five minutes."

"This particular situation doesn't call for the kind of knowledge I have."

"And what kind of knowledge is that?"

"I know all about cataloging books. I know a few languages, and pretty much the entire history of Earth between 1750 and 1950 Common Era, and the high lights of all the other times."

"I guess you're right: not much use for cataloging books in this field."

"What about your knowledge? You haven't said anything about what could be wrong here."

"I did. Woodstock was held on the 16th of August. Maybe in this alternate history it wasn't held."

"How do we find out if it wasn't?"

"We start walking." Jeffrey gets up and makes his action follow his words.

Kate quickly scrambles up and follows him.

"Maybe we're in the wrong field," Kate suggests. "Maybe they're all a little further ahead."

"There were 500,000 people at Woodstock. We would notice them if they were anywhere near. My parents were here, you know, at the Woodstock Festival. They told me about it. The music, the people, the 20 miles traffic jam, the muddy field and the friendly owner who made it all possible." Jeffrey points at a man approaching them through the field.

"What are you doing in my alfalfa?" he asks them when they meet.

"Alfalfa? Is that what this is? I was already wondering what kind of grass this was." Kate bends to pick some up.

"It's not a grass."

"We're looking for the Woodstock Festival. It's supposed to be here."

"Woodstock Festival? Woodstock is about 50 miles north. There's no festival here."

"Alfalfa, is that something you eat?"

"It's for the cows."

"Do you know some people by the names of Michael Lang and Joel Rosenman?"

"Never heard of them. Now, get out of my field." He shows them the way.

"So, we're in the wrong place for the Woodstock Festival." Kate twirls a sprig of alfalfa between her fingers.

"Woodstock wasn't held at Woodstock. This is Bethel, isn't it, mister?"

The man in front turns around. "The two of you don't even know where you are?"

"Well, it's hard to tell. All alfalfa fields look a like."

The farmer squints his eyes at him. "This is Bethel. This is my field and you're trespassing. Keep walking." He turns back and increases his pace occasionally looking over his shoulder to check whether the two people behind him are keeping up.

"Woodstock was held at Bethel," Jeffrey explains to Kate with a smirk.

"But now it isn't."

"We're gonna make the concert happen. Fix history."

"We could do that, or we could voyage as much as possible, so they can get us home. Fixing history gets in the way of our voyaging time."

"That's true." Jeffrey thinks about it. The sooner they get back to the Island the sooner the Council can get him back to his parents. That is, if they allow him to get back to that alternate history. He can see where that might be problematic for them.

"On the other hand," Kate continues. "What if they're watching, or something, and see that we're constantly leaving red light times, without trying to fix things?"

"That could get us home sooner," Jeffrey suggest. "They will want to give you a stern talking to for not doing your job as a Voyager properly."

"Haha. If they wanted to give me a stern talking to they would have already gotten us home."

"Maybe they are working on their speech."

"I think Joseph can do them at the drop of a hat."

"And maybe they just want us to give history a push here and there."

"Doubtful. I'm not even allowed near an omni without two senior Voyagers supervising."

Jeffrey thinks Kate is joking, but her grim face tells him otherwise. "Why not?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

They reach the road. The farmer tells them to stay off his field in the future, turns around and walks away.

"C'mon. If you did anything that makes the Council not want us back at the Island I want to know about it."

"When I was fourteen I took an omni and nearly caused time to implode."

Jeffrey is stunned. He didn't know such a thing was possible. "How -- how did you do that?"

"I tried to change my own history." She shrugs her shoulders. "You can't change your own history. It's a Catch-22 sort of thing. You can only get situation A if you're in situation B, but if you're in B you don't want A."

Jeffrey gives her a puzzled look.

"I told you that mom died when I was thirteen."

"Yeah."

"I took an omni because I wanted to save her life, but I only wanted to save her life because she had died."

"Makes sense. I would do the same if I had the chance."

"No, you wouldn't, because you're a lot smarter than I am. You see, if I had saved her life, then she wouldn't have been dead at the moment I decided to go back in time to save her, meaning that at that moment I would not go back in time to save her and she would be dead. Then I would want to save her, she would be alive, I wouldn't want to save her, and she would be dead, meaning that I would want to save her ..."

"Please, stop talking. You're making me dizzy."

"Time would get dizzy too, and implode. At least that's what they told me."

"But what about ..." Jeffrey knits his brow. "My history ... I mean, my folks' history was changed. Wouldn't that also lead to time to implode?"

"It doesn't seem to. Council said that you can't change your own history. That doesn't mean someone else can't change your history. I don't believe much in that theory anyway. It's just an old wives' tale. It's Voyagers' job when they encounter a red light to go back in time and give history a push. Doesn't that mean they have just changed their own history? I mean, the wrong history is part of their history, but the wrong history doesn't exist anymore."

"Can't this be explained by Voyagers existing outside Earth time so events on Earth don't affect them?"

Kate squints at him. "That's pretty much also Joseph's argument. I'm not convinced, 'cause how does that combine with the theory of not being able to change your own history?"

"I'm the wrong guy to ask." Jeffrey holds up his hands in surrender. "All I know about time travel is what Bogg told me seven years ago. All I know is: if there's a red light we go and fix it."

"You want to do that now?"

Jeffrey shrugs. "Might as well. If we can't get back to '89, let's go back in time and work that ol' magic."

"Magic?"

"Magic." Jeffrey flexes his brows. "Don't you think voyaging is kinda like magic?"

"No."

"I guess because you grew up with it?"

"That, and because any well-established technology is indistinguishable from magic. I can still distinguish the technology." Kate takes the omni from her belt. "Where do we go from here?"

"Miami, Florida, about a year earlier."

"Your wish is my command."

"Now, let me just rub the magic lamp."

-oOo-

_Florida, 200 miles north of Miami, 1968_

"It got the year right; that's something."

"And the place just a little bit off," Jeffrey says. "We're a fraction of an inch too far north."

Kate gives him a little push. "We're there."

"I think you just pushed me north. Now we're even further from Miami."

"Sorry. Wanna try the omni again or walk?"

"Or hitchhike." Jeffrey puts up his thumb. A car rushes past them without even slowing down. "In principle."

"Never mind. We're young; the walk will do us good."

"You really don't know much about geography."

"I know a fraction of an inch is about 200 miles. I was just trying to keep our spirits up."

"I rather keep my thumb up." Jeffrey puts up his thumb for the next vehicle approaching them.

A pink van stops a little further ahead. It features peace symbols, a rainbow, several birds and the word love. Kate and Jeffrey run toward it.

"Where are you two heading?"

"Miami."

"Very good. So are we. You are welcome to join us."

"Beats walking."

Jeffrey pulls open the sliding door of the van. The potent air that wafts from the back of the van makes him step back. Kate doesn't seem to be bothered by it and climbs into the van. Jeffrey follows.

"These are Ems and Johnno, my wife Rainbow, and I am Jethro."

"Kate. Jeffrey."

"All right. And we're on our way again."

The van pulls up. Most of its passengers tumble over one another. Kate lands on top of Johnno.

"I'm sorry about that," she says, scrambling up to sit down.

"Don't worry about it. We're all among friends here."

Apart from the front seat there are no seats in the van. There is some carpet on the floor, and some colorful drapes hang on the walls of the van. A number of duffel bags and suitcases is stowed in the back. The passengers make themselves comfortable in the little room that is left.

"It's a good thing we picked you up. It's long walk from here to Miami," Jethro shouts over his shoulder. "How did you two get in the middle of nowhere, anyway?"

"We hitched a bad ride from Tallahassee," Jeffrey replies.

"Tallahassee. I like that word. Tallahassee." Kate nudges Johnno. "First I learned alfalfa, and now Tallahassee. Do you like alfalfa?"

"I've never had any alfalfa."

"Not to eat. It's for cows. But as a word. It's so beautiful. Only tree letters and then they make that word: alfalfa. And than alfalfa itself, have you seen it? It is so, so, ugly."

Ems rolls over in a fit of laughter. Johnno takes the joint she is holding from her hand, he takes a draw and passes it to Kate.

"Uh, Kate." Jeffrey shakes his head at her. Perhaps they should have waited for another ride; Bogg's not going to like if he returns his daughter to him and she's become a druggie.

"I better not. I already feel a little lightheaded." She passes it to Rainbow, who doesn't mind she is already lightheaded, takes a draw and cuddles up against Jeffrey. He looks a little helplessly at Kate. She smiles back at him.

"You wanted to go to Miami."

"Mmmiammmiii." Ems picks herself up. "You can't go to Miami dressed like that."

"What's wrong with the way I dress?"

"Well, it's so, The System. Not for travelers like us."

"Yeah, didn't have travel in mind when I picked this out."

"Good thing we ran into you. We can help you." Ems falls back down. "But you have to wait till we stand still. Things are moving too fast."

"I can wait."

-oOo-

At their next rest stop Ems starts rummaging through her bags and comes up with a long purple dress for Kate, dark brown flairs, a wide white shirt and a vest for Jeffrey. He protests but she insists he wears it.

"Great, now I look just like your dad," he complains to Kate.

Kate looks him over. "My dad never wore a headband."

"Can I braid your hair?" Rainbow asks. She pulls Kate down to sit on the van floor and sits down next to her. "You have beautiful hear. You should let it grow."

"A minor detail," Jeffrey says. He tries to pull the vest straight. He makes an uncomfortable face.

"Yeah, well, I'm not in a garment of my personal choosing either. You want to swap? I take the vest and you take this purple ... tent?"

"Purple is not really my color."

"Nice. Have you come up with an idea yet of what we shall be doing in Miami?"

"Find Michael Lang."

"Yes. How? And what do we say to him?"

"I don't know. I'll think of something when we see him."

"It's not just the way you dress that makes you look like my dad. He also always went in without a plan."

"But it got the job done."

"Not even my dad is using himself as a positive example. Now you stand over there and start thinking of how we will find Michael Lang."

"You're bossy when you're angry."

"What makes you think I'm angry?"

"You look angry."

"Purple isn't my color either."

"Finished," Rainbow says. "Now your other side." They switch sides. "Michael Lang is organizing a concert in Miami. That's where we're going. Join us."

"Sounds good," Jeffrey says. "Some times you got to trust a little in lady luck. " He turns around and leans against the van. "History is all about the right people meeting at the right place and the right time. Voyagers are no different."

"Very philosophical."

"Thanks. I've had five years to think about this."

"Come on everybody, back in the van." Jethro claps his hands. "We still have quite some distance to cover till we get to Miami."

They all get back in the van. Jethro climbs behind the wheel and pulls up. Kate falls over Johnno again.

"Sorry, again. Wait a moment while I untangle myself in this dress."

"Don't worry, take your time, make yourself comfortable."

"That sounds very lovely. I do hope this dress will co-operate with that." Kate pushes herself up, untangles herself from the dress, folds her legs in lotus position and tucks the dress down underneath. "Like this."

The van makes a sudden movement and Kate falls into Johnno's arms.

"Sorry, pothole," Jethro shouts.

"I'm giving up. I can I lie like this for a while?"

"Sure." Johnno pulls her closer. "You comfortable this way?"

"As comfortable as I can be in a van."

"Why are you going to Miami?"

"We heard there was an interesting concert." Johnno starts to laugh. "What's funny about that?"

"It's just the things you say. Tallahassee, alfalfa, interesting concert. No one says concerts are interesting. Except my parents perhaps. You're quite new to this world, aren't you?"

"It's the first time I'm off the Island where I was born, if that's what you mean."

"You're delightful." Johnno rocks Kate from side to side. "On an island, oblivious to the world. This is wonderful."

"Why is that wonderful?"

"You can start completely anew. You must shed your past. Forget everything you learned on that island. What you learned there is not the world you want. You must come along with us; we can teach you what your new world is like."

"I can already see some of that." Kate nods towards Jeffrey and Rainbow. Rainbow tries to kiss Jeffrey; Jeffrey tries to hold her off.

"Jeff, why don't you come sit with us." Johnno beckons him.

Jeffrey says to Rainbow he has to go, pushes her of him and crawls over to Johnno and Kate. Rainbow finds comfort for her loss by putting her head in Ems's lap.

"Johnno thinks I should forget everything I've learned in the past, everything about the life I've had up to now."

"I'd like to forget about the life I've had."

"That's what I want to hear. You must start forgetting now."

"I wish I could. I think it is going to stay with me for the rest of my life."

"Everything can be forgotten. What is so bad that you think it will stay with you forever?"

"I used to be a slave," Jeffrey answers.

"We all used to be slaves. Most people still are. Slaves to their jobs, to their bosses, to their wives, to their neighbors. Slaves to the money they have, slaves to the money they don't have. Takes us, we are not slaves to anyone; we go where we want to go; we follow our dreams."

"So you're slaves to your dreams." Kate concludes.

"Haha. You must be a student of philosophy. The first thing they do is always pick holes in other people's argumentation."

"I've only dabbled a little in philosophy. What are you a student of?"

"I'm a student of history. I just finished a masters in contemporary history."

"Isn't that quite the opposite of what you are professing, to shed my past. You have been completely submerged in it."

"That's how I know we must shed our past. First I thought we should know our past so we could learn from it. But all I learned is that we, mankind that is, keep repeating the same mistakes. What we really need is to get out of this visual circle, shed our past and start a new."

"But how would we, mankind that is, prevent making the same mistakes if we don't even know what they were anymore?"

"There's that philosopher in you again. Part of the reason we keep making the same mistakes is because history is holding us hostage. We are slaves to our past. We want the same things we've always wanted. To keep from making the same mistakes, we must set ourselves new goals. If we follow new dreams, we cannot repeat what we did in the past. We can set history straight this way."

"An interesting theory. Setting history straight."

"We are the children of the future. We can set history straight by not repeating the mistakes of the past."

"Teach history a lesson?"

"Yeah, you're getting the idea."

"I'm also getting an idea about what kind of talk this is." Kate pushes herself up. "It's ridiculous. History can only learn at the moment it is happening. Not after the fact."

"You're not setting you mind free." Johnno sits up as well. "You're still clinging to the past. You must let go of it, Kate." Johnno grabs her by her arms and shakes her lightly. "Let go of it. The past will not make you happy. I know, I've studied the past."

"Have you studied my past?"

"Well, not you personally. But your past is the same as that of millions of young people here in this country, here in this world, forced to pay for the mistakes our parents made, forced to repeat their mistakes. We must break this circle."

"You're getting a bit to intense for me," Kate says.

Johnno doesn't listen, he grips her arms even tighter.

"We must break the circle. Shed the shackles of the past. Follow our dreams. Don't you see it?"

"Right," Jeffrey says. "We must make our own mistakes."

Johnno and Kate look at Jeffrey. He looks back at them openly. Kate chuckles.

"Can you guarantee that, Johnno, that no more mistakes are made if we follow new routes?"

"Uh, I guess there is always the possibility of new mistakes. But that's not a problem. The problem is that we keep repeating the same mistakes. We are stuck in the mud, but we keep stepping on the gas, 'cause that's the only thing that we know how to do. That is just getting us deeper and deeper into the mud. What I'm saying is that we must try new things."

"Like get out and push?" Jeffrey asks

"Yeah. That may also not work to full satisfaction. We could push the car free, but fall over in the mud ourselves."

"That would be a new mistake."

"Yes. But it got things moving again. That's what I mean, we must not repeat the same old things and just keep the wheels spinning. We must do new things, follow new dreams. Get away from the mud."

"I guess you have a point there." Kate admits. "It's new to me, so I have no dreams yet. Tell me about yours. How you found that learning history will help you not make mistakes; what dreams are you going to follow to make new mistakes?"

"I am going to be a singer/song-writer. I've already written a few songs. I can sing them for you."

"Please."

Johnno starts to sing for them. The women join in. Kate is enjoying herself, but Jeffrey starts to look worried.

Johnno's repertoire is only small, and just as they start the second song for the third time, Jethro stops the van, turns off the engine, turns his head and shouts to the people in back: "We're here."

"We're here."

Rainbow pushes open the sliding door and they all spill out of the van. They're on the beach. The evening has fallen. A bright moon helps them see.

"I thought we'd camp out here tonight," Jethro says.

"Is that allowed?" Kate asks.

"You really must start to shed off what you have learned." Johnno tells her.

"What's that?" Kate pointed at the waves rolling in on the beach.

"That's the ocean. Have you never seen one? I thought you said you were born on an island?"

"It's not an island in an ocean."

"Kate. Can I talk to you for a moment?" Jeffrey pulls Kate by her arm away from the others.

"Quite impressive, such an ocean." Kate walks over to the waterline. She lets the water roll over her feet. "This is nice. What do you want to talk about. I saw you look worried."

"I think Johnno and Ems are my parents."

"Uh, Jeff, not every time we meet two people they are your parents."

"Of course not. But they really are. Johnno and Ems? John and Emma."

"A coincidence."

"C'mon. You can see how much Ems looks like me? Same hair, same nose."

"I wasn't really paying attention to that."

"I was, but it didn't hit me until Johnno started to sing. I grew up listening to those songs. They are my folks."

"If you say so." Kate shrugs. "Well, don't do anything that makes them rethink having children."

"And you, stop flirting with my dad."

"I wasn't flirting."

"You're a Bogg. You flirt."

"Do not."

"Do to. Just like Bogg. I couldn't turn my back or he had found himself another girl to kiss."

"I'm not kissing anyone."

"Yet." Jeffrey flexes his brows.

Kate wrinkles up her nose. "They've changed, your parents. They're no at all like the people we met in New York."

"I've never heard my dad talk like that. We must forget about our history? He became professor of modern history."

"Perhaps he changed his mind. Or the pott clouds cleared and he could think clearly again."

"Nothing like an anti-drug use lesson seeing how uncool it makes your own folks."

"Disappointed?"

"No, it's a valuable lesson." Jeffrey gives Kate a wry smile. "We should go back to them. That Rainbow knows Micheal Lang; she could help us get to him. Or do you want to stay here, look some more at the ocean?"

"It's interesting, isn't it, water coming and going." Kate kicks some water to Jeffrey. "Water is a wonderful thing."

"Yes, it is. I'm going now. They're making a nice warm camp fire." He walks away. Kate hitches up her dress and runs after him.

"Kate, Jeffrey, good that you're back. We must symbolically burn your past," Ems says. She picks up two small bundles of clothing and throws them in the fire.

"No!" Kate shouts. She jumps forward to rescue her cloths from the fire. Johnno grabs her around the waist to stop her.

"They're just clothes, Kate. You are still too much attached to the past."

He lets go of her. Kate shuffles back to Jeffrey who's standing by thumbs hanging loosely in the pockets of his pants. It amuses him to think his dad is now burning his own clothes.

"The omni," Kate whispers to Jeffrey. "I don't think it's fireproof."

"That's all right. I have it." Jeffrey shows her the omni hanging on his waistband.

Kate lets out a sigh of relief. "You really are the smartest." She throws her arms around him and leans her head against his shoulder.

"Are you all right?" he asks a little uncomfortable.

"For a moment it flashed through my mind: we're stuck here. As long as we have the omni there's a way out, but without it ..."

"I know the feeling. But we've got the omni; no need to worry. For now."

Kate looks up and smiles at him.

"Let's sit down."

The evening is spend around the camp fire. Johnno sings his songs again, this time while playing the guitar and Ems accompanying him on bongo. A few other people join them, bringing their own instruments and songs. Jeffrey and Kate fall asleep on the beach.

-oOo-

The next morning Jeffrey wakes up with sand in his mouth. It takes him a moment before he remembers where he is. This is the third time in as many days he wakes up in a strange place. There's a purple sack lying next to him. It takes a moment before he remembers who that is. He softly shakes her to wake her up. Her first instinct is to hit the disturbance.

"Kate," Jeffrey whispers. Kate opens her eyes.

"What's the matter? Have you solved the problem?"

"No."

"Then what are you waking me up for?"

"I thought we might have a quick brainstorm together."

"My brain doesn't storm on an empty stomach. So get me some breakfast first, then we talk." Kate pulls her dress back down over her feet. "The nice thing about a tent this big, is that you can use it as a sleeping bag." She closes her eyes again. "Doesn't really matter what you get me for breakfast."

"Quite the morning mood you have."

"I hate it to be woken up before I wake up."

"Right." Jeffrey gets up. "I'll get some breakfast then." He puts his hand in his pocket. He's still got the money his mom gave him to buy clothes. He steps over a few sleeping bodies and starts making his way to the boulevard along the beach.

-oOo-

When he returns Kate is standing on the flood line again letting the water wash over her feet.

"I got you breakfast." He hands her a paper bag.

"I just found out they also burned my shoes," Kate says as she looks into the bag. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. I wouldn't worry about the shoes: lots of hippies walked around barefooted. You'll get used to it."

"I don't mind the walking on my bare feet, for now. It's just that I might like them for our next voyage."

"Before that, we need to think of a way to get a green light here."

"Hmm. Say, do you know a man named Micheal Lang?" Kate asks a man that has just joined them in the flood line.

"Sure. He owns a head shop in town."

"I doubt we can find him there. He's probably busy organizing that concert." Jeffrey shakes his head.

"You mean the Miami Pop Festival? That was two weeks ago."

"You sure? Does that lot know?" Kate points her thumb over her shoulder to the people around the ashes of the camp fire. "Rainbow said they were here for that concert."

"Rainbow's probably not your most reliable source of information."

"That's probably true."

"How reliable are you? Do you know where this head shop is?" Jeffrey asks.

"Sure. I can take you there."

"Good. Lead the way, we'll follow."

The man turns around and starts walking. Kate and Jeffrey follow.

"What's a head shop?" Jeffrey asks.

Kate shrugs. "I grew up on a remote island. I don't know much about the world."

-oOo-

"So that's a head shop," Jeffrey says as they stand in front of the shop. "I could have known this if I hadn't spent the last seven years else where."

"Probably."

"Here you are. That one sitting on the floor is Michael Lang."

"Do you know him?" Kate asks

"Only by reputation. Why did you want to see him? Obviously not for something he is selling here. I bet this is all very new to you."

"I was told yesterday that I should start having new dreams."

"Do you even know what kind of dreams you can get here?"

"Uh." Kate has no answer to that.

"Where not here for ourselves," Jeffrey says. "We're here for our friend Johnno. He's a singer-song writer. Or he's gonna be. His songs are very good. We heard Michael Lang is in music, does management for musicians, that sort of thing. We thought he could be manager for our friend."

"So, why don't you go in?"

"It seemed like a good idea when we were all just sitting around the camp fire singing along."

"Suit yourself. Mind if I pick up on this idea?"

Without waiting for an answer the man enters the shop. Kate and Jeffrey look at one another. Kate pushes open the door. They just missed the start of the introduction.

"... I'm with a rock group called Train. We really could be going places, but for that we need the proper management."

"Wait." Jeffrey takes the omni of his waistband and opens it. "We have a green light."

"We do?" Kate is surprised. "You mean we just gave history a push? Wow. I've got shivers. I imagined it would be harder." She smiles from ear to ear.

"It usually is. Sometimes all you need is a little luck."

"I guess so. And what was our bit of luck?"

"That man is with a group called Train. In December of this year Michael Lang will go to New York to sign up this group for a record deal."

"How did you know that? The man never introduced himself to us."

"I didn't know that. I just remembered that my dad told me that Micheal Lang was a manager of a rock group. I just told it here to give us a reason for being here. And he picked up on that. It was luck."

"Whatever it was. It's my first green light. I feel proud."

"Yeah, it feels good." Jeffrey can't help but smiles from ear to ear too. Part of him thinks it's great to be on the road again.

"What happens next?"

"Well, Lang goes to New York, where he meets all the other people with whom he organizes Woodstock Festival. The rest is history as they say."

"I meant with us. What happens next with us?" Kate pulls on one of her pig tails. "What shall we do now? Do you want to go back to the beach"?

"Better not," Jeffrey says after a moments hesitation. "We have a green light now. I don't want to mess that up.

Let's try if we can get to 1989 now."

"Sounds good."

Jeffrey sets the omni. "Ready?" Kate grabs his arm and nods. "Here goes nothing." He pushes the trigger button.

They look at each other. Kate bites her lip.

"Let's go somewhere else," Jeffrey says. "I heard there was this interesting concert, about 50 miles south of Woodstock."

Kate squeezes his arm in reply. Jeffrey sets the dials to August 16, 1969.

-oOo-

"Back in the alfalfa field," Kate says to Jeffrey. "It looked a lot better last time we were here."

"That's what happens when 500,000 people plow through a field."

A blond girl puts her arms around Jeffrey. "I love you." Then she gives Kate the same treatment. "Peace." She moves on to other people.

"Was that Rainbow?"

"Could be. I see another familiar face over there."

"Hey, Jeffrey, Kate." Johnno waves at them. "Imagine meeting again here, among all these people." He gives them both a hug. "Where did you go so suddenly? We really missed you in Miami."

"We had some things to do that couldn't wait."

"How have you been? Still telling people to let go of their past?"

Johnno grins sheepishly. "Actually, no, Kate. I've gone back to the past. I have a position now at Columbia University."

"You've gone all responsible."

"Worse even. I got married. Ems is expecting our first."

"Congratulations."

"Jeffrey is a very good name for a boy."

Kate nudges Jeffrey in his side in a reflex.

"Thanks, I'll remember that. I should get back to Ems. You wanna come along?"

"No, we should get back to our own group." Jeffrey makes a vague gesture in another direction.

"Well, it was good seeing you again." Johnno greats them and walks away.

"Jeff, you can't suggest a name for yourself to your parents."

"As it happens I was named after one of my grandfathers. His name was Geoffrey."

"Okay," Kate says thoughtfully, carefully eyeing Jeffrey. "I'll except that."


	8. Wheels of Motion

Hawaii Beach, 8 June 1972.

Jeffrey sits on the beach watching Kate play in the flood line. Another attempt to get to 1989 has failed. They found out they could get as far as 1985. He was tempted for a moment to stay there and look for his parents. Then Kate asked him how he was going to explain not being fifteen without mentioning time travel. Jeffrey rubs his hands in his face. The weariness of slave labor has made him look old before his years. He could easily pass for someone in his early to mid-twenties. If he thinks about it it becomes all the more surprising that his mom actually recognized him. He must have looked ten years older than when she last saw him. But then, mothers know.

Kate thought the time boundary might have slipped and she suggested opening up the omni again to set it back. Jeffrey declined the offer. He wasn't comfortable with Kate opening the omni again. He rather voyages with her. There are two reasons he's okay about voyaging with her. One is that when they get taken back to the Island he gets to see Bogg again. The other is that Kate has never voyaged before. He feels kind of bad for triggering the omni in the first place. He feels responsible for Kate; he should take care of her the way Bogg took care of him.

He wants to see Bogg again. He saw him maybe half an hour in that short time he spent on the Island. He wants to say thank you to him. Thanks for everything, thanks for the voyaging, thanks for the rescue, thanks for being a friend. Then, after he has said good bye to Bogg properly, someone from the Council can take him back to his folks.

If they let him go back to his folks. Jeffrey can think of all sorts of problems they might have with that. It not being the correct history; he being a Voyager. They can't make me a Voyager if I don't want to, Jeffrey decides. Can they? He should ask Kate what happens to people who are recruited as Voyagers but don't want to be Voyagers. Bad Voyagers, he knows, get banished, or perhaps they have changed that practice. Isaac Wolfstein had wanted to retire to an uninhabited Island. Bogg wanted to quit and stay in 1876. So why wouldn't they let him retire to 1989? Even if it isn't the right history? Kate is right: if his mom and dad stay out of the lime light it won't matter whether they died in 1982 or not.

If Council doesn't let him go back to his folks then he will ask Kate to rig an omni for him. But first they will have to be called back to the Island. He wonders what is keeping the Council. Three days have passed for them already. Surely some times has passed on the Island too. Someone must be missing them. Bogg for instance. He just spent twenty-one years looking for his friend; he would notice if that friend was gone again half an hour later. Bogg also isn't the type of guy who would sit by idly if his daughter went missing. At least he wasn't. Jeffrey can't imagine he has changed that much.

-oOo-

"I thought I might find you here." Susan closes the door behind her and walks over to Bogg who sits in front of the Omnitron.

"You said a couple of hours. It's a couple of days now."

"I'm sorry. I thought ..."

"So did I. I don't blame you. It's just ..."

"I know." She puts a hand on his shoulder.

"If I knew how to work the Omnitron I would get them home myself."

"Is there anything I can get you? A more comfortable chair for instance?"

"I'm good. Your company would be nice."

"Your muscles are really tense." Susan starts to massage his neck and shoulders. "You know, your muscles are strong enough to break your own bones. We don't want you to break your shoulder on top of everything."

"What an odd thing to say."

"I think Kate told me once. You remember, she had found those medical books in the library. How old was she then, six or seven?"

"Six."

"Six. She'd tell everyone about the new things she learned. Did you know your own muscles are strong enough to break your own bones? Did you know there are 27 bones in the human hand?" Susan tries to imitate the six-year-old know-it-all.

"I was just glad the books were in alphabetical order, so I could put them on a higher shelf before she reached the R's and S's."

"I believe you also suggested we'd re-organize the library so that certain books would be out of reach for people of certain height."

"If you had re-organized the library, we would have found Jeffrey a lot sooner."

As if suddenly stung Susan pulls her hands away from Bogg. "Perhaps." It makes her sick to think that Voyagers had the information to Jeffrey's whereabouts all along in their library, but didn't know about it, because there was a back load of four decades worth of cataloging. Susan feels very responsible. So much so that a little part of her is almost glad Jeffrey isn't on the Island so she doesn't have to face him. She is head of Administration and Legal. The library is her responsibility. She feels she has utterly failed the young man. Susan changes the subject. "Where are they? I don't see Jeffrey."

"Hawaii Beach. Jeff is sitting over there somewhere, staring into the distance. I can only imagine what he is thinking about. Kate's playing in the water. It's silly, isn't it?" He looks up at Susan.

"What is?"

"I used to be a pirate and my eighteen-year-old daughter has never seen the ocean."

"Yes, that is silly."

"Too bad there isn't any sound."

Susan walks over to the console. "There isn't anything on mute here. I guess the omni isn't transmitting sound." She turns back to Bogg. "Anything else I can do for you?"

"You could take over my class."

"I tried to, but your students refused to be taught." She doesn't mention one of them suggested that Kate and Jeffrey hadn't returned yet because there is something wrong with the omni they took. She plans to look into that later.

Bogg takes her hand and presses a kiss on it. "Thank you for being here for me."

"I'm always here for you, Phineas."

-oOo-

Kate stops playing in the water. She sticks her hands in the pockets of her slacks and looks at Jeffrey. She's glad she's out of the purple tent and wearing clothes that are more appropriate for voyaging: slacks and a shirt. Jeffrey said that all she needed was a leather jacket and she would look just like her mom. She had smiled at that. It feels right to dress this way.

She walks over to Jeffrey and drops down next to him. She pulls up her knees and digs her toes into the sand. She tries to think of something to say to him. But everything she can think of she's already said. Sorry I took you away from your parents. Maybe I can reset the time-boundary again. Jeffrey had declined that offer. She can tell him about her theories why the Council hasn't called them back yet. They've been gone for more than fifty hours. How long does it take to push the right button on the Omnitron? Well, maybe she won't mention that. Just keep it to herself. What else is there to talk about? She could ask him about his Voyages. He might tell the stories differently from her dad. Or perhaps about his time on the plantation. Susan had said that it would be good for him to talk about it, but that he probably wouldn't want to at first. Should she be the one to talk to him about that? How about someone who can relate better? Her dad, or ...

"What's it like growing up on Voyager Island?" Jeffrey asks.

Kate looks up. She frowns at him. "I don't know. I can't compare it."

"I didn't ask you to. I'm just curious. What's it like? Do they teach you history all the time?"

"At the School, yeah. And other stuff that is useful for Voyagers."

"Such as breaking and entering." Jeffrey chuckles.

"Yeah, and proper manners for proper times. Lots of sport and exercise to keep fit."

"Sounds like fun."

"I guess." Kate turns her attention to her toes. "It was better than the way Jane Eyre grew up."

"Her name sounds familiar, but I can't quite place her."

"She's a character from a book. She grew up in the house of an uncle with a cousin who beat her up regularly. Then she was sent to a boarding school where they didn't feed the students properly."

"Sounds like the plantation where I was."

"Growing up on the Island would be better than that."

"I definitely would have liked to spend my teen years on Voyager Island rather than on the Island of Ceylon."

"I would have liked it too if you had." Kate stretches her legs. "When I was ten or eleven I used to think if Dad finds Jeffrey now it will be as if I have an older brother. I ... I would have liked that. There never was anyone my age around."

"Guess you were kind of lonely growing up."

"Yeah."

"You wouldn't want me for a brother, though." A little devious smile plays around his lips.

"Why not?"

"As an older brother I would have to do this." Jeffrey jumps on Kate, pulls an arm behind her back and tries to tickle her everywhere he can reach with his other hand. Kate screams and laughs and tries to wriggle away.

"Say uncle."

"What?"

"Say uncle."

"Uncle?"

Jeffrey lets go of her. Kate scrambles up and jumps Jeffrey in return. Her shoulder collides with his chin.

"Ow." Jeffrey adds a few phrases he learned at the plantation as he touches his split lip.

"I'm sorry." Kate sits back on her haunches. "But I hope you learned some more Mandarin Chinese than just the swear words."

"Jeffrey looks up at her in surprise.

"Nothing else to do on the Island except learn a lot of foreign languages. Voyager recruits come from everywhere. They were always happy to teach."

"Swear words first, ha?"

"For some reason they catch on easiest. Still, I think I would have liked you as an older brother."

"I think I would have liked being your older brother."

"I guess things would have been different if Dad had found you when I was little. We would have moved off the Island and Mom wouldn't have ..."

"What happened to Olivia? I mean, I understand if you don't want to talk about it."

"Is okay. There was a fire, an accident. She didn't omni out in time."

"I'm sorry to hear."

"Yeah." Kate rubs her nose and looks away. "Nothing we can do about it anymore. Let's go somewhere else. I've kind of seen the Ocean now."

"You have? They way you were running in and out of it I thought you'd never tire of it."

"Well, I have. Let's go somewhere there isn't an ocean. Wanna try going back to 1989?"

"It hurts too much every time we fail. I'd rather go somewhere else entirely."

"Just tell me where you want to go." Kate takes the omni from her belt.

"I'd like to go to the Wild West."

"The Wild West? Oh yeah, when men were real men and women were real women, and getting shot was just one smart ass remark away."

"I see why you would have a problem there. That's where the real America was made."

"Sure. That's what some French writers mean by America's cowboy mentality."

Jeffrey gives her a mild glare. "Okay, you pick a place where we can go, but it better be a good place."

Kate nods. "Put your shoes on and get up."

They rub the sand of their feet and put on their sneakers. Jeffrey convinced Kate that pair of tennis shoes is the most comfortable footwear for voyaging. She rolls down the legs of her slacks. They get up. Kate opens the omni and sets the dials.

"I'll take you to some place you'll enjoy."

-oOo-

Chicago, 1893.

Jeffrey and Kate look around. They've arrived at the steps of a large building in classical Beaux-Arts style. A cheerfully chattering couple nearly bumps into them. The man and woman make their apologies for their carelessness and continue on their way down.

"You're mistaken. I don't enjoy red lights. I enjoy green lights," Jeffrey says after looking at the omni to see where they are.

Kate closes it. "I didn't know this was going to be here."

"What is it?" Jeffrey asks.

"How should I know? I just got here."

Jeffrey rolls his eyes and looks around. "Columbian Exposition," he reads off a banner. "Chicago, 1893. Is that where you wanted to take me?"

"Yeah. Wanna try and fix this light?"

"I think we have to. Wonder what it could be though." Jeffrey looks around and starts to move down the stairs towards the crowds.

Kate quickly follows. "I hope it's not some thing missing from the exhibition. It'll take forever to find it. Plus, I don't know everything that should be here. Do you?"

"Well, as all the World Fairs of this era it was mainly used to show off the advances in technology. So there should be an engineering building or something. At least I know that should be there." He points at an immense statue of a female in robes holding a lance and a globe. "The Republic."

"I feel very small right now."

"That was pretty much the point to it."

They stare at the statue for a moment from their position across the large water basin.

"Maybe we should go our separate ways. We can cover more ground that way," Jeffrey suggests.

"What if the thing that is wrong is something you know, but I don't? Or the other way around? We'll end up covering the whole ground anyway. We might as well do it together."

"I thought you said you knew all about this time period. I know enough of it to recognize when something important is missing. You go that way; I'll go this way. We'll meet each other again here at the end of the day." Jeffrey turns left to go his way.

"I'd rather stay with you. Dad would never forgive me if I got you lost."

Jeffrey thinks about this for a moment. "Probably not." He smiles. "C'mon. I hope Bogg will forgive you that it will now take twice as long for us to finish our business here."

"He'll understand when I tell him why."

"We were at the World Exposition in Paris, Bogg and I," Jeffrey tells as they start on their tour of the fair grounds. "There's just a very special atmosphere at these World Fairs. The excitement about the future, the new technologies, the architecture. Most of these buildings burn down next year. But some of them are still preserved in the 1980s. Oh, look a food stall." Jeffrey rushes over, Kate in his wake. "Hamburgers were first introduced here at the Columbian Exposition. Smell that?" He takes in a deep breath. "That's the smell of America." Kate chuckles. "Well, it is. I've missed that smell. I haven't had a burger in seven years."

"You've had one two days ago."

Jeffrey frowns at her. "Oh, yeah. I wasn't really paying attention to the food then." He inhales deeply again. "A lot of things were introduced here first," he says as they walk on. "Food stuff, like hamburgers and carbonated drinks. The US Postal produced its first commemorative stamp, and the first picture postcards. It was the first showing of alternating current to the general public, and ..." Jeffrey tries to think of more firsts.

"The Ferris Wheel."

"Yeah, that was a first here. The Columbian Exposition was the first to have a separate section for entertainment. It was all gathered along the Midway. Since then Midway has become the term for ..."

"I meant, the Ferris Wheel isn't here," Kate interrupts. "I don't see it."

"This building could be blocking your view."

"I don't think I saw it before either."

"Let's go to the Midway and see if it's there."

They run through the mass of people as fast as the crowd allows them, following the sign posts that point the way to the Midway. At the beginning of the Midway they stop looking down the long straight. They turn their heads to look at each other.

"There's nothing here blocking my view anymore," Kate says.

"No, there isn't. Ferris didn't make his wheel. That makes it easy."

"Makes what easy?"

"We now know what we have to do. We have to get the first Ferris Wheel built."

"Hmm. And do you know who built the first Ferris wheel?"

"Like I said: Mr. Ferris. George Ferris." Jeffrey stands up straight as if he's giving a lecture. "Ferris Wheels were named after him."

"You happen to know where we can find him?"

"Uh, no, 'fraid not."

"Good thing you've got me. George Ferris, Pittsburgh, Fall of 1892." Kate sets the omni.

-oOo-

Pittsburgh, September 1892.

"Hawaii in the Summer is a lot nicer than Pittsburgh in Autumn." Kate shivers. "And it's windy here. Was Pittsburgh the Windy City."

"That's Chicago. And it wasn't named windy because of actual wind, but because of politicians that produced a lot of verbal wind. Now, how do we find Mr. Ferris?"

Kate's eye is drawn to something she reads on a newspaper held by a man waiting for a tram. She leans in to get a closer look. "Look that's interesting. Here's a segment on the Columbian Exposition. Architect Daniel Burnham, who designed the thing, says they haven't come up with anything yet that can answer to the expectations of the audience." The man puts the paper down and frowns at Kate. She throws him a winning smile. He shakes his head and puts the paper back up. Kate turns to Jeffrey. "I think this should be the cue for our friend to appear. Our yet unknown friend."

"George Ferris, will you ever ... " a little woman shouts after a man.

"I think we just got a bit of luck again." Jeffrey smiles to Kate.

"How dare you leave the house dressed like that." The woman has caught up with a man and is unbuttoning his coat. "Your shirt just randomly buttoned, your tie in a knot that boy scouts use to tie tree logs together." The woman straightens the man out. He doesn't argue with her. "There, that's better. Now you can present yourself again."

"Yes, dear."

"And I'll see you back home tonight. Do not forget we have company tonight, so don't be late."

"Of course, dear. I will, dear."

The man bows his head in greeting to his wife, then runs away to catch the tram. Jeffrey and Kate run after him and just manage to jump onto the tram as it pulls away from its stop. They stand on the balcony next to George Ferris.

"I read in the paper that the exposition in Chicago next year still needs somethings that can answer to what the audience expects," Kate starts. "But it didn't say what kind of thing that would be. What kind of thing would the public expect from an exhibition like that?"

"Big things," Jeffrey replies. "Big buildings, like the Christal Palace. Big machines, like trains."

"I heard that in Paris they had this machine in which you could take a fake train ride. You sat in some kind of train carriage. In stead of the carriage moving, the scenery, that was painted on large canvas roles, was pulled past the windows. It was just as if you were making a real train journey. That may be something for the Chicago exposition."

"Well, they probably want something that is also unique. London had the Christal Palace, Paris the Eiffel tower, Chicago should have ... "

"Another big construction?"

"And something that is moving," Ferris joins in the conversation. "They should want something that is big and moving."

"Like those fake trains I was talking about."

"No, that's too little movement. It should be big, and move up. Like those wheels they have in Atlantic City."

"Sure, but those aren't very big," Kate replies. "I believe one of them burned down in June. It was made out of wood and that wasn't very big. I think only 30 feet. The Eiffel tower, now that is big, it must be a 1000 feet high."

"But that is made out of steel. Steel is a much better construction material than wood. The same length of a beam of steel can take on much more force than a beam of wood. No, if you're going to build a big wheel you must use steel."

"You talk as someone who is in the steel business."

"Well, I am. George Ferris. Testing of steel and iron."

"Kate Bogg." They give each other a friendly nod. "With a name like yours it's no wonder you are in the steel business. Ferris or ferro, that's Latin for iron."

"And what kind of business would you be in with a name like Bogg, non too boggy, I hope."

"I haven't really chosen a business yet. I might become a librarian."

"You will never a good position dressed like that." Ferris nods to Kate. "A woman dressed as a man."

"I travel a lot. It's more comfortable this way."

"I imagine so. Still, a lot of people would say that you need to dress right to impress right. Well, my wife would say. She thinks it's very important that the proper clothing should be worn, the proper way."

"Yes, we saw her rebutton you. But we are getting away from the conversation we were having. If you made a wheel out of steel, how big could you make it?"

"Much bigger than 30 feet. 100, 200 feet at least."

"The bigger, the better," Jeffrey says.

"Right. And I'd put in big cars, not like those in Atlantic City with only four or five people per car. Dozens of people per car." Ferris is on a role now. "Come with me." He jumps off the still moving tram. Jeffrey and Kate follow him.

"The Eiffel tower is construction wise not very interesting." Ferris continues to talk as he takes on a brisk pace. "Basically it's a 1000 feet long bridge standing on one of its ends. What would be interesting, is to take a 1000 feet long bridge and make it round, like a bicycle wheel."

They go into a restaurant where Ferris flops down at the first table he sees. He takes a note book out of his pocket and starts sketching.

"I would make the wheel 250 feet high, and 20 feet wide. That's at least twice as wide as any of the wheels in Atlantic City."

"If you make it 30 feet wide you could fit in cars that would fit maybe forty people." Kate who sat down next to him points out. "That's more than go into the Atlantic City wheels for all their cars at the same time."

"Right, right. 30 feet. And not forty people, let's make it sixty." Ferris adds some measurements to his sketch. "If the wheel is 250 feet big then I want two towers, one on either side, like so, which support the middle axis. Those should be 150 feet. You could use the same construction principle as used for the Eiffel tower. Two little bridges standing on one end." Ferris chuckles at the little joke he has made, then quickly returns to his sketch. "To drive the wheel, I put a steam engine here."

A waiter arrives to take their orders. Ferris and Kate are too busy to notice. Jeffrey suggests he should come back later. He leans back in his chair watching Kate and Ferris design the big wheel. They discuss the size of the beams needed for the wheel; those needed for the towers; the design of the cars; the number of bearings needed to keep the cars in upright position; how big the load of the cars will be. Occassionally they briefly pause when a page on the notebook needs to be turned, but most times they keep talking so no time gets lost discussing their big plan. Jeffrey feels an outsider to this conversation. The six-year-old boy that has to be quiet while the grown ups are talking. At the same time he is amused how the mutual enthusiasm of Ferris and Kate fires them both up even more.

He remembers when he was a kid and they made trips to Coney Island. He loved the rides on the Ferris Wheel. You could see for such a distance. The world is at your feet, his dad would say. Now he's sitting at the table with the man who made the first Ferris Wheel. This is what he loves about voyaging: to personally meet the men and women who made history.

Ferris closes his note book.

"I think we just about discussed everything there is to discuss about it." He taps the book on the table. "I'm going to write this up as a proposal for the exhibition people in Chicago. They wanted to give the public something it expects. We're going to give them something the public hadn't expected in their wildest dreams." Ferris pockets the note book. "How is it that you know so much about engineering and construction?" he asks Kate.

"I've always had an interest in engineering. It's easy to pick up things if you have an interest in them."

"So your father must be an engineer. Does he work here in Pittsburgh? I don't think I have heard of an engineer named Bogg around here."

"I don't think he does much work in these parts."

"Oh, look at the time. I was already running late for work before I met you. It's a good thing I'm the boss, I won't fire me." Ferris jumps up. "It was very nice meeting you both." He shakes both their hands and then rushes out of the restaurant.

"An interesting character," Jeffrey says. It's about the first thing he has said in an hour's time.

"Why would my father have to be an engineer for me to have an interest in engineering?" Kate looks upset.

"I think it's part of the time we're in, engineering isn't part of a woman's field of expertize."

"It is still presumptuous."

"I guess so. I used to get it all the time: I tried to warn people about things, but they wouldn't listen, just because I was a kid."

"Yeah, I know. But I just had this really intense and stimulating conversation with George, he really appreciated my input, treated me like an equal. And then he ends it with something like that. I feel a little disappointed in him, that's all."

"Let's just check if we have a green light. That'll cheer you up."

Kate opens the omni. "Green light. You're right, that does make me feel better. So now we go back to Chicago to take a ride in that Ferris wheel. We deserve that, after all we helped design it."

"You helped design it," Jeffrey says as he gets up. "You did a good job for a first time voyaging."

Kate smiles. He puts an arm around her shoulder and she sets the dials of the omni.

-oOo-

_A/N: Kate is mistaken: the fake train rides were a feature of the 1900 Paris' World Exhibition, so she shouldn't have mentioned them in 1892._


End file.
